


If Odysseus Stayed At Sea

by That_Ghost_Kristoff



Series: a storyteller at the fiddler's green [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual Character, Español | Spanish, Français | French, Historical Accuracy, John Silver Manages To Have Friends, Or As Historically Accurate As I Can Get While Still Kind of Following the Show, Other, POV John Silver, Spanish-Speaking John Silver
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-10-31 08:32:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10895589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/That_Ghost_Kristoff/pseuds/That_Ghost_Kristoff
Summary: John Silver walks aboard a pirate ship with no intentions to stay for long. Of course, nothing in his life ever goes as planned.(or: how to find your long lost family on a lawless island halfway across the world, make new friends, and accidentally become a pirate king)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Technically you need to have read "Scheherazade in Colonial Times" to understand this, but I've added enough background information that any new reader should be able to follow along.

John Silver is twenty just a week when he steps ashore onto the Bahama Islands, England’s failed colony that his parents and their friends wanted to save. 

At first, he doesn’t recognize it—”Whose is it?” he asks a rigger, a man named Logan already swigging rum from a blue glass bottle that sparkles blindingly in the morning sun. On the journey here, Captain Parrish intended to stop in Cayo Hueso, one of the islands of the Floridas, but Baltimore caused too much of a delay, so he cut that from his itinerary. Since John’s West Indies experience until now has consisted entirely of the sea, this is his first time seeing palm trees in ten years. 

“Ours,” Logan says, grinning, and presses the hot glass bottle into John’s hand.

That’s when he knows it’s Nassau. 

It’s only hours afterwards that he has the time to slow down and thinks of what it means that Logan said  _ ours _ rather than  _ England.  _ Now it’s night, he’s about the spend the night in a  _ brothel _ , and a woman with the most beautiful face he’s ever seen lies beside him. Her name is Max, and she’s around his age, by his estimate. Though she doesn’t walk like she’s ever been aboard more than a rowboat, her hair is as salt-stiff and wind-whipped as any sailor’s. Her skin’s dark, but he went to San Deigo enough to know the look of someone half-and-half. One of her first questions was to ask if he was French. 

Today is a Tuesday in early February, and the West Indies’ nighttime humidity settles like pitch in his lungs. John Silver was Spanish, once, and his experience with heat was of the dry kind, and his experience with February always one of miserable coldness. Last February he spent in Boston, where when it didn’t snow, it still rained ice; the couple February’s before that he spent in northern Quebec, where night stretched into the daytime hours. All the English skies understood was rain. Even Seville was chilly, however mildly. Summer-hot winters are unfamiliar, though he doubts his current companion, whose accent is a local French, knows any different. 

“You are very strange,  _ Monsieur _ ,” she says suddenly after several long minutes of silence, when he begins to drift to sleep. The candle on the end table’s burning low, accenting the decay in the furniture with deep shadows. “I’ve never had a man in my room who didn’t wish for my services.”

John blinks away exhaustion. “I’m not meant to be here,” he says, looking down. “Making noise seems counterproductive.”

It’s too hard to explain that he doesn’t  _ wish  _ for the services of anyone, a truth that only another French whore in the far north knows about him. For now, this excuse is easy enough. The Madame of Nassau’s one reputable brothel doesn’t know he’s here, because he’s not meant to be. He wouldn’t be, either, if he didn’t need an alibi. There’s a schedule better than any treasure map nicked from a cook in his jacket pocket, which hangs from the end of the bed. It traces the route of the  _ Santisima Trinidad _ , which is information no English merchant captain should rightly have, and he can sell for a high price to any pirate with decent knowledge of how trade works. He recognized it fast enough as a route for a ship from the Spanish treasure fleet ( _ Las Flotas des Indias _ , as it’s called, which Parrish spelled it  _ Indaes _ ), but needed the captain’s log kept in Flint’s cabin to be certain to which one it belonged. 

Though he doesn’t  _ think  _ he left any clue he was there, he knows from his run in with Captain Hester at Little Queens Street that sometimes people have a way of knowing. It’s easier to be here, with Max’s friend next door backing the story that she was  _ so  _ pleased to meet someone else French that they spent the night speaking their native language until they grew too tired to stay awake. Without the Madame’s knowledge, of course. 

“You’re not wrong,” she says, one corner of her mouth quirking upward. Though their shoes are off and they’re both stripped of their jackets, they’re fully dressed. “It’s forbidden in any case. Eleanor Guthrie has paid a high price to be sure no man touches me.”

“Who’s Eleanor Guthrie?” he asks. The only Guthrie’s he knows of operate a tugboat company out of Brooklyn.

“You don’t know Eleanor Guthrie?” Max says, shocked, and props herself up on her elbows so that her long curls slide off her shoulders. She says Eleanor Guthrie’s name with surprising affection, though the woman clearly  _ pays  _ for her services. “She is the power on this island. Her father is governor, but in name only. Eleanor runs all operations.”

When John left London, his understanding of Nassau was that Thomas was meant to be governor. “I don’t know much about the West Indies,” he says, tucking his hands behind his head. “I know the French have the most business here but the English have the fastest growing political power. That’s the extent of my knowledge. Who’s the strongest captain?” If she’s close to the woman who runs the island, then Max ought to know. 

“Eleanor will always say your captain,” Max says, lowering herself again. “In a way, it’s true—get on the bad side of one, and you’ve made an enemy of the other. But realistically, the strongest captain at this time is Charles Vane—”

“ _ Charles Vane? _ ” John says. “ _ The  _ Captain Vane? He’s here in Nassau?” Even sailors who have never seen waters south of the Carolinas know about Charles Vane, quartermaster to Blackbeard, in the same way they know of Captain Flint or Henry Every. 

Max smiles, and laughs quietly. “Oh,  _ mon cheri _ ,” she says. “Everyone is in Nassau.”

That much John knows. It’s the reason why, seven years ago, he looked a street urchin king in the face and claimed he was the son of Henry Every’s quartermaster. Pirates are bedtime stories, romanticized and feared in equal measure. If Charles Vane and Captain Flint are still sailing from Nassau, then Whitehall refused Thomas’ proposal, or worse. 

“I’ll find us a way out of here in the morning,” John says, rolling on his back to look at the ceiling right as the candle snuffs out. “How long will it take to get Charles Vane’s crew to agree to this?”

“Oh, not long at all,” she says. “Do you think you can really do this? Secure us passage on a lawless island where you know no one but a whore?”

He assures her that even in less than savory places, it’s always possible to find passage for a man and his wife so long as she’s pregnant. “We aren’t too far from Miami or Havana,” he says. 

“We are also not far from Port Royal,” she says. “I can see why you are anxious to leave. I don’t know many Spanish pirates.”

“And I’ve seen no other French whores,” he says in his London accent. “France and Spain worked together in the war. We’re natural allies, you and I.”

With a laugh, sweet and quiet, she says, “I have never been a man’s wife before.”

Splitting his pay is not ideal, but there are worst people to be saddled with in this venture than a woman too clever to care for someone who pays for her love. 

 

 

Two days later, Max and John sell the  _ Santisima Trinidad’ _ s thrice-stolen schedule to Charles Vane for the highest price his crew can afford. In the same day, the fearsome Captain Flint’s crew mutinies under a man called Singleton’s insistence, an effort that fails when the good captain kills his contestor in the name of a lie that the dead man stole that thrice-stolen schedule. John might not have run if Singleton had just lost, not died violently, because the man who killed him is Thomas Hamilton’s partner, Lieutenant James McGraw. 

He told Max the truth in a panicked rush and, hours later with no knowledge of what happened to her, sits scared beside a syphilitic madman’s dying fire in the island’s rocky outcroppings. Somewhere among the crags is the famed Charles Vane and his quartermaster. Also here, but coming from a different direction, is  _ James McGraw  _ ten years changed, his quartermaster, and his bosun—both of whom knowingly lied for him. The stiff paper crinkles loudly as John unrolls it, and he reads it over quickly. Across the fire sits another man with a pockmarked face, watching him with opium glazed eyes. More than half the schedule is in Spanish. Almost hysterically, he thinks that unless James’ linguistic skills improved, he wouldn’t have been able to read this without help anyway. 

Then he wonders if Thomas and Miranda are here too, and how utterly ironic it is that for years, he gave his fake father Captain James Flint’s likeness, all the while claiming he was Henry Every’s quartermaster. 

Once he’s sure he can shut his eyes and visualize the schedule perfectly, he tosses the paper into the fire and waits until it burns before running. Years as a thief and a fur trader have left him light on his feet and comfortable in the dark, but the rocks are slippery and the terrain unfamiliar. The air stinks of rotten fish, stagnant water, and disease. He’s running without a destination. Eventually, one crew or the other will catch him, and all he can do is hope they don’t shoot first. 

Someone rams into him near the cliff’s edge, pinning him back so his head knocks against the rocks. Hal Gates, James’ quartermaster, is saying, “This is him, Captain. This is the—”

“Fucking Christ,” James says, ignoring Gates and Billy Bones, the oversized bosun who crouches on the rocks above. “ _ John? _ ”

John feels his heart beat too quickly against James’ arm. “Uh, hello,” he says after a short pause. In the torchlight, the red in James’ hair looks a deeper shade than normal, and the earring that wasn’t there last they saw each other shines dimly. There are new lines in the corners of his eyes and around his mouth, like he’d forgotten how to smile. “Now, I can explain—”

“Wait,” Billy says from above, gesturing so the torchlight moves. In contrast to James, John must look relatively unchanged. He’s just taller now, and tanner than London sunlight could ever turn him. “You two know each other?”

“We knew each other in London,” James says, frowning. Even his voice is gruffer. “He was the son of a friend. What the  _ fuck  _ are you doing here, John? No, first, give me the schedule.”

Cringing, John says, “I’m sorry, but I can’t. Not yet. I had to take precaution that you wouldn’t kill me, so I burned it—”

As Gates and Billy call out in angered exasperation, James says, “This isn’t Shakespeare, John. You can’t just trust in your memory.”

“It was half in Spanish anyway,” John says, defensive, as James lowers his hands. “Does anyone of you even know what  _ urca  _ means?” There’s a brief silence before he says, “It’s a cargo vessel. You can’t blame me for trying to guarantee my survival.”

“You won’t need to guarantee anything if you hadn’t stolen it in the first place,” James says, taking hold of John’s shirt sleeve to pull him away. 

“Stolen it from who?” he says, going along without a struggle as Gates follows, gun cocked, and Billy slips down from the rock. “An English merchant captain? Some British joint-stock company? I didn’t know you wanted it until you murdered someone this morning.”

“In which case you should have come forward,” Gates says, unhelpfully.

James says they’ll question him further when they get to town. For the rest of the journey, they’re quiet, the three of them surrounding him in a triangle formation too similar to a walk to the gallows for anyone’s comfort. 

 

 

Even Eleanor Guthrie’s wealth can’t save her elegant furniture from the sea breeze's corrosive ruin. That’s what John thinks when James pushes him into an uncomfortable wooden chair in the privacy of Eleanor’s office just past midnight, and slides him parchment, an inkwell, and a quill. 

“I want the schedule, John,” James says, leaning against the desk next to him rather than across. Now that his jacket’s off, thrown across the Queen of Thieves’ high-back chair like this place is his, he looks a little more like a navy man that John remembers. “The  _ whole  _ schedule. I also want the truth. I know you were in my office last night.”

John dips the tip of the quill into the ink and begins, though he may be writing his own death warrant. “I wasn’t,” he says evenly, and repeats the lie he and Max concocted. “Maybe it was Singleton after all.”

“If you didn’t have access to the Captain’s log,” James says, tone skeptical, as he folds his arms across his chest, “then how did you know what it was? What were you planning on doing with the money?”

“I’m from Seville, James,” John says, looking up. “You really think I don’t know what sails out of  _ La Casa de Contratación? _ ” As he returns to writing, he says, “And to answer your last question, my plan was to return to London. The war’s finally over. I thought even the Lord Proprietor couldn’t protest me being there if you were all willing to accept my apology, but I’m guessing that if you’re here, Thomas and Miranda aren’t there either.”

After James says that no, they aren’t, without elaborating, he asks, “Why did you leave?”

“Because Thomas’ father said I was liability to his efforts,” John says to the paper, “and that the Spanish weren’t welcome, so he would send me to an orphanage.”

James sighs, loud and long. “We always knew he was involved,” he says. “He denied it, of course, the bastard. They legally adopted you, John. He couldn’t have done anything.”

“I know that  _ now _ ,” John says, wetting his quill again. “I didn’t at ten. You can’t blame me for running. You don’t know what those places are like.”

Abruptly, he thinks of Abbie, the little nobleman’s daughter who helped him escape, saying, “But they  _ beat  _ children in orphanages.”

For a moment, James is quiet. Then he says, “You’re going by Silver again.”

“I didn’t know how well known the name John Hamilton was.” John hesitates, quill hovering above the parchment, doubting James’ seemingly genuine, exhausted gladness to see him, before continuing onto the last few destinations on the schedule. After James asks where he went, John answers, “To Bristol first. I got royally fucked there by British society, again, but I perfected the accent. From there I found a place aboard a crew as a cabin boy. Sailed to the Colonies. Stayed in New York for a few years. Then went to Quebec—from Quebec to Boston, and then in Boston I found a position as a seaman aboard Parrish’s crew. You attacked on my first voyage. Where’s Miranda and Thomas, and how did you end up Captain Flint?”

Slowly, as though it’s been years since he had to speak a word of this, James explains that Lord Proprietor Hamilton accused him and Miranda of having an affair, and claimed Thomas went mad when he learned of it. “Thomas committed self-murder in Bedlam,” he says, looking everywhere but John. “Peter—you remember Peter, don’t you? Peter Ashe—offered to shepard Miranda and I away to one of his friends in Europe, but we refused. Instead we came here. I joined a pirate crew. She’s inland.”

“She’s here?” John says, trying to process the news that Thomas, the man who’s legally his father and made him who he is today, killed himself in London because his own father was that resistant to seeing the pirate issue fixed diplomatically. “Can I see her?”

“I’ll talk to her first,” James says, slipping the schedule away. “I doubt she’ll turn down the opportunity. This is everything?”

“Everything in translation.”

After carefully reading it over, James says, “Why didn’t you come forward? Once you realized it was me. Clearly there was no point in returning to England then.”

Until last week, the closest John ever came to a pirate was a hanging in London, which James rushed him away from quickly so he wouldn’t see the man die. “I’d just watched you kill someone over that,” he says, nodding to the paper. “How was I supposed to know you wouldn’t do the same to me?”

“Singleton was a barbarian,” Captain Flint answers. “I regretted letting him on board within days, and he knew it. You’re—you’re John Hamilton.”

“Oh, that sounds all grand and reasonable now,” John says, “but you can’t hold me accountable for suspecting otherwise.”

“If you’d just  _ explained  _ yourself—”

“You scared me.”

They stare at each other before James concedes, and tells him again that he’ll talk to Miranda. “She and Thomas were the optimistic ones,” he says. “They always said you’d find your way back. Do you feel like you’re committing treason, John?” he adds, waving the schedule. 

Even as John says, “I haven’t been Spanish in ten years,” he thinks that maybe he does, a little, but on paper he’s an Englishman, and he just learned his English family was torn apart. Miranda once called London a monster, and for just a moment, at least, he can understand the draw of turning away from the allegiance to any king and taking to the sea. 

 

 

James leaves to talk to Miranda, and though John wants to go to the pier and see if the sweet Maxine Argent was able to escape to Havana alone, he isn’t allowed to leave Billy Bones’ side. It wouldn’t be so terrible if Billy weren’t acting as though John couldn’t be trusted. 

“You can at least tell me what we’re doing,” he says as he dogs Billy’s footsteps through Nassau’s shadowed back alleys. It’s sunny and raining at the same time, signalling a fox’s wedding, and a thick coat of mud blankets the dirt roads. “James trusts me. Shouldn’t the Captain’s word be good enough?”

When they finally stop, it’s behind the butcher’s, which stinks of blood and heat. “You shouldn’t call the Captain by his first name,” Billy says, which isn’t an answer. He folds his arms and positions himself so he has a clear view of the street. “Your familiarity won’t look good to the crew.”

“But you already know we’re familiar,” John says, leaning against the shop’s back wall. It’s robin egg blue, nearly the same color as the jacket he left at camp with Randall, and rough against his side. “I’m not calling him Captain Flint any more than I have to. But that’s not why you dislike me.”

Billy looks away from the street briefly to John, then back again. “I don’t like you because you’re a fucking thief,” he says. “Do I really need another reason?”

“To be fair, I didn’t know it was stealing until yesterday morning.”

“So then you stole from that merchant captain first,” Billy says, so John sighs. Rain sticks his hair to face and neck, flattening his curls. “What? You expect me to believe he just gave it to you?”

“Parrish?” he says, quirking a brow. “Well, if I had stolen from him, it’s not as though he deserved any less. Unfortunately, the privilege didn’t go to me. That was the real cook who did the thieving, or at least who tried to before he panicked and fell on a sword.”

Again, Billy looks away from the street, failing in whatever his job is. “You’re joking,” he says. “You’re not even a real cook?”

With a shrug, John says, “‘Even criminals have to eat.’ I thought it would get me on board faster than my experience in the rigging, and I very much didn’t want to die. If you don’t trust me, at least trust my sincerity.”

“I trust you sincerely want to live.”

“Well, that’s a start.”

After a moment, Billy shifts his weight, and, eyes trained on the street, says, “So you know the Captain pretty well, yeah? You’d help him if you had the chance?”

Though John doesn’t want to be a pirate, it seems now like he doesn’t have a choice in the matter. He can’t back away from James and Miranda twice, after all. “Just let me know how I can be of service.”

“Not everyone’s convinced to let the mutiny die,” Billy says, clearly still doubtful about John’s intentions, and explains he knows who they are, but not their motives. “They all know I’m loyal,” he goes on. “No one knows about you. But you’re going to need be back in time to make a proper dinner,  _ cook _ , so you’ve got ‘til sunset. Start with Turk. He’s the easiest.” 

John says to give him just six hours, and begins with Randall instead, then moves to Turk, and finally to Morley, who’s the sanest of the lot. “I don’t like the idea of working under a man who kills his own crewmates,” he tells each of them, discussing a mutiny in the shade of palms or alley shadows. They trust him easily, with his carefully relaxed posture and curls frizzing from the post-sunshower humid heat—his nervous smile and eyes shifting in the fear that a loyalist will hear. 

Quick enough, they tell their new crew member the truth about their vicious captain. Turk’s mad enough to share his theories with anyone who asks, and Randall simple enough to do the same. If John had to guess, Morley only wants to warn the new, young, ignorant crew member not to trust even the lure of gold. 

Four hours after John left, he returns to find Billy hiding from the heat in a palm grove, his eyes closed and head pillowed in his hands. John sits on a rock near the bosun’s head, and says, “Morley’s the one to worry about, but since he’s paired with Randall and Turk, it’s not as though anyone will listen. Your mutiny is harmless.”

Billy blinks at him, squinting against the sunlight that peeks through the palm leaves as the breeze brushes through them. “You’re seriously trying to tell me you talked to all of them already?” he says, sitting up. Sand rains down from his shirt and neck, but sticks to his closely shaven hair. 

“There’s an advantage in being unknown,” John says, pushing his hair from his face. “They all suspect the three of you lied about the schedule, but they have no proof. Randall is Randall. Turk—well, I’m sure you know Turk. Would anyone believe that?”

Shaking his head, Billy says, “Even the most superstitious men know the Captain isn’t being controlled by some witch. He’s been telling that story for years. What about Morley? The other’s I know. But Morley? Morley I have no idea.”

John debates before deciding that if he doesn’t say something, then Billy will go to Morley directly. “He thinks that James doesn’t have the crew’s best interest at heart,” he says, resting his elbows against his knees. A stronger gust blows through the trees, rattling the leaves in a toneless song. “It’s a less dramatized version of Turk’s tale. There’s a mistress in the interior that he cares for more and all that. But she’s not a mistress or a witch.”

When John asked what that meant, Morley explained that James once used the crew to hunt a man down, and a woman was waiting for him on the beach when they returned. Even without verification, John knows the man was Alfred Hamilton, and can’t find it in himself to blame either of them. 

“You’ve known it’s him for a day,” Billy says, standing, “and you’re already claiming you know there  _ is  _ a woman, or who she is? Who the fuck are you?”

“He told you,” John says. “I’m the son of an old friend. The rest is his business. Anyway,” he adds. “Morley isn’t convincing. You don’t need to worry.”

Billy runs a hand down his face. “Jesus,” he says, and looks down. Whatever conclusions he draws probably won’t be far from the truth. “Look, you’re all very new to this, so I won’t expect you to understand, but in a crew like ours, harmless can turn to dangerous overnight. Keep your eyes open, Silver.”

Maybe Billy doesn’t trust him, but he doesn’t seem to dislike him, either. For now, John’s willing to accept that much, at the very least. 

 

 

“Oh,  _ John. _ ”

Miranda smells of hibiscus and hard soap rather than lavender perfume, and her dress is cotton, not silk, without the hard boning of a corset underneath. Now John is taller than she is, though not by much, and he presses his forehead against her shoulder when he returns her hug. There’s no feather or beaded, Oriental comb in her hair. Her skirts billow around his legs, unimpeded by any hoop beneath them. Her fingernails cut through his thin shirt as she grips him, saying how she knew he would find them, one way or another, and oh James, you should have had faith. 

When they finally separate, she reaches up to wipe away her tears, and then touches his face, moving his hair from his eyes. “You’ve grown so tall,” she says, smiling, and then laughs. “Your Spanish tan is back.”

In England, she was as aristocratically pale as Eleanor Guthrie still manages to be, but now she has color in her face. “I spent the last few months at sea,” he says. “You look—the same.” It’s true, too; while James developed lines around his eyes and mouth, Miranda looks as though she hasn’t aged a day. 

“You flatter me,” she says, and turns, motioning to her porch. “Please, come into the shade. We can take tea and talk. James tells me you’ve been all over the Colonies. How did you survive the cold?”

“Badly,” he answers, and, with a glance at James, follows Miranda to the wrought iron table and chairs on her porch already set with Spanish-style bread, proper English jam made with guava, and a cold citrus tea.

Out here, the small house’s stucco walls and simple furniture aren’t ruined by the sea air, but reminders of the coast surround them regardless. Seashells sit inside the sill of the open window, and a windchime of driftwood hangs on the other end of the porch, catching the breeze that sways the trees and vegetable plants. The house is incomparable to the one she and Thomas shared in London, but the garden is an improvement. Along the edges are the first citrus trees John’s seen in years, with flowers, plantains, tomatoes, and squash growing in the center. 

As John sits in the chair to Miranda’s left, she says, “I always imagined you returned to Spain. We actually discussed when we left if there was a way to find out if the Armada had conscripted you.”

“There wasn’t, of course,” James says, his shoulders and back losing the tension John’s grown used to seeing over the past couple of days so he appears much more McGraw than Flint. “Not for two people so obviously English. How did you end up in  _ Bristol? _ ”

“I didn’t mean to,” John says, lying instinctively, because he doubts what James told him in Eleanor Guthrie’s office was the whole truth. “I actually thought I was returning to Spain, but the ship I stowed away on docked and didn’t leave. I spent the first week looking for work, but I was too young for a cabin boy. Ended up as a cook’s apprentice at this inn called the Spy Glass. You didn’t explain why you chose to come here.”

James and Miranda glance at each other before he says, “You told me you weren’t certain if people knew the name John Hamilton. It’s similar. Gossip travels quickly. Gossip of  _ that  _ caliber wouldn’t be confined just to England.”

“Peter was very generous offering,” Miranda adds, “but his friends would hear the story. Lord Hamilton’s word would always be more believable than a woman’s and a carpenter’s son.”

Carefully, in case either of them ever heard the story of John Silver, the pirate’s son, John says, “The innkeeper’s son told his mother I stole something he stole from the market. That’s why I left. I convinced a captain to take me on as a cabin boy and sailed to New York Island.”

From there, he tells the truth, more or less, as they exchange stories. Miranda shares her experiences living alone in the interior, and James tells the tale of Captain Flint like piracy is a legitimate career. “That’s why the  _ Urca  _ gold is so important,” he says eventually, when he finally explains the connection between Captain Flint and Thomas Hamilton. “It won’t make our vision—his vision—possible in the form we once imagined, but it could save Nassau. Places like this don’t last in the state she’s in now.”

That doesn’t sound like a well thought out plan, but John keeps that thought to himself for now. Instead he drinks his tea, and remembers the days when it was market-bought Earl Grey in a wallpapered dining room rather than homemade citrus on a breezy porch. “You should probably know before we set out,” he says, setting down his chipped glass, “that my experience with cooking consists of corn mush and squash stew. I don’t know shit about anything in the ship’s cupboard.”

“It’s potatoes, fish, and pig,” James says, raising a brow. “You’ll manage.”

“We only had pig when we were wintering in a fort,” John says, because he  _ does  _ know that improperly cooking meat can fuck with a person for days. The whole  _ voyageur _ troop once nearly died because of undercooked chicken. “There were real cooks in the fort. Potatoes and certain fish I can manage, but not that.”

Again, Miranda and James share a look he can’t decipher. Then she says, “Well, James will just have to teach you. I can show you how to make a proper bread, if you need.”

“The men will notice,” James says, shaking his head. “I’ll figure out how to put you in the rigging. You have more experience sailing than most of—”

“No,” Miranda says, tone sharp, before John can speak. “Rigging is  _ dangerous _ , James. I don’t need John dying on a snapped rope.”

John goes to agree with her, but James sighs, and says, “All right. But I’ll put him on the rigging if there’s no other choice. I’m sure we’ll think of an excuse.”

Yesterday, Morley claimed James had a mistress he listened to above the crew. Even if Miranda isn’t a mistress, he certainly listens to her better than anyone else. 

The conversation moves again to other subjects—how none of them are allowed to leave now that they’re together, and how John must spend the night once the unnamed house guest is gone so they can have longer to talk than just a few short hours. The sun moves across the sky as they discuss old memories, the two of talking in stilted patches of words like they put Thomas in a box until now. Probably they had. If John knew he’d died the way he did, he would have done the same. 

No one mentions Alfred Hamilton. 

When the sun’s finally set, and air cooled with the promise of another bout of rain, James stands and rests a hand on John’s shoulder. “We should leave,” James says as Miranda’s smile fades. “Tomorrow needs to be an early day. We’ll be back soon.”

“Of course,” she says, following them to their horses. Before John mounts, she wraps him in another hug, kissing the side of his head, then moves on to James. “I expect you to bring each other back safe.”

They both reassure her that they will, and not to worry, which permanently removes any possibility John ever had of walking away. 

 

 

When James said that “tomorrow needs to be an early day,” John hadn’t realized that meant they were careening the ship, or that overnight, Billy had been promoted to quartermaster.

In the morning, Billy the Quartermaster directs the crew on careening the ship by tethering ropes to palm trees, which John can see already is a terrible idea, as James teaches him discreetly how to cook and season a pig. “Why do you keep looking over there?” James asks mid-way through explaining how to use annatto.

“What?” John says, glancing away from two men walking away from their ropes. Morley and Billy talk not far away. Today the humidity isn’t as bad, and the sky cloudless, so it feels almost as though he’s home. “It just seems poorly planned. Careening a ship with trees rooted in sand, I mean.”

One of the reasons Captain Parrish was delayed in Baltimore is because his ship was damaged in the dry docks. Nassau doesn’t even have that much. Every time the wind blows, the trees sway, which moves the ropes. That can’t be good for the ship, since it relies on the tension to stay positioned on its side. Its shadow falls across the beach, looming and dark and stopping just short of the tents. 

Frowning, James says, “I know, but it’s our best option. Everything steadier is too far inland. It’s why careening is always such a rushed job. If Richard Guthrie hadn’t fucked us over, we would’ve had more time. Turn the roast before it burns.”

Absentmindedly, John does, looking again from the ship to the palms to Billy and Morley. After a minute, Billy shakes his head and stalks away. James instructs John how to finish, and returns to his papers in the shade. Maybe he wouldn’t be hot if he weren’t in an overcoat, but the sheer number of people here who aren’t dressed practically for the weather is so unbelievable that it isn’t worth commenting upon.

It’s midday when the first crack sounds, louder than a line of musket fire. John turns, catching sight of the ship swaying and the trees uprooting from the sand, as Billy shouts for his men to fix it. There’s nothing to do now, though, and the crew knows it, running towards camp in a panic. James calls out his own instructions for the crew to keep organized and safe. Within minutes, the first few palm trees have snapped at the base, lying across the sand like Chinese fortune sticks. 

In the confusion, the ship’s mouser cat dashes between John’s legs and out of sight. 

As the fourth tree falls, the ship shutters, and Randall—because of course it’s  _ fucking Randall _ —screams from under the hull. The cat dashes out, scampering along the sand, as half the crew swears and the other half jolts forward to help. Before anyone can get far, James is ahead, around the hull and out of sight. Morley follows close after, and no one else moves. 

The ship gives another great shutter, and Randall shouts without James or Morley reappearing. If Randall’s pinned beneath that, John thinks, no one will be able to simply dig him out. With a quick glance around, he finds the cleaver he used for the pig, still coated with blood. He forces down the nausea at the thought of what this means, grabs it from the sand, and runs. 

“Don’t be an idiot,” Billy says, missing John’s shirt by a hair’s breath when he reaches out to grab him. “Silver!”

“What the fuck?” James says when he reaches them, breathless, and drops the cleaver. Morley looks from the cleaver to James as he takes it without hesitation and continues, “Get out of here, John.”

John’s seen one amputation in his life, and doesn’t need to see another. Just before he’s out of sight, he sees Morley stick a piece of driftwood in Randall’s mouth and James raise the blade. The remaining trees groan and shiver as he reaches the men. Once, twice, three times, and then Morley’s scream joins Randall. With a resounding crash that shakes the masts, the ship falls. 

A moment later, James emerges from the shadow of the hull, calling for help as he half-drags Randall through the sand, leaving behind a trail of blood from the cook’s amputated foot. Dr. Howell runs forward to meet them, and John looks to Billy, who looks back, because Morley’s dead, and the potential for a second mutiny along with him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John succeeds in betraying King and Country, but that doesn't make him any better at piracy.
> 
> (or: how John Silver tries solve problems with words, and fucks everything up)

Hours after the tide rolls in to take the  _ Walrus  _ back out to sea and washes Morley from the hull, Billy comes to John and says, “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t think the Captain let him die.”

John doesn’t have one, but he’s never been anything less than a good liar. “Morley was holding down Randall’s leg and waist when I left,” he says, watching the ship bob anchored just out of the shallows. “If he was pushing him out and James was pulling, there wasn’t really a way to get him out fast enough once the ship fell.”

In the moonlight, the beach’s white sand looks silver, and the sea black. Billy follows John’s gaze, bags of exhaustion beneath his eyes after one day as quartermaster, and groans. “He said the hunt for the  _ Urca  _ was going to get us all killed,” he says, rubbing his head. “This is a fucking disaster.”

“I didn’t tell him about Morley,” John says. “If you didn’t either, there’s no reason he even could’ve known about a second mutiny. Last I checked, sailing is a hazardous job. Careening a ship with palm trees doesn’t make it safer.”

“It would have been fine if everyone listened to me,” Billy says, defensive. “But you’re right. Rushed jobs usually are disasters, palm trees aside. That’s what we should do with the gold. Build a fucking dry dock.” After a moment, he says, “Go see that whore you spent the night with, if she’s still around. Be back in enough time to set sail in the morning. Just get the image of this out of your head for the night.”

Though John has no interest in spending a night in the brothel again, the man who he convinced to ferry them away should be on duty, and he can see whether or not Max left. It’s not often he gives a shit about someone, but Eleanor Guthrie seems more likely to throw her favorite whore to the proverbial wolves than James ever was to do the same to John. 

He doesn’t go far into town before he sees the mob forming outside the Guthrie tavern preaching its owner’s tyrannical rule over the island. Torches lining the walk up to the front steps cast an angry glow over the crowd, and in the top right window, he catches a flash of dandelion yellow and beige. As she disappears, the man on the steps cites the cause of this ill-tempered sermon as her deposing Charles Vane of captaincy. That doesn’t sound possible, but he’s seen enough here already to know there’s something about Nassau that suspends any concept of impossible. John leans against the corner of the tanner’s shop across the street, the red stucco wall digging through his shirt, and waits for the reason. 

As the captain says, “And all for the sake of a whore,” he hears a rustle from the flowering bush behind him, and turns in time for the famous Anne Bonny to press a thin knife to his throat. 

“You’re the thief?” she says, looking him from head to foot from beneath the low brim of her hat. Her hair’s as red as the Wanted posters as far north as Delaware claim. “You look like a fucking whore yourself. Flint’s men let you on?”

He holds his hands up in surrender. “I can assure you,” he says, “I’m not a whore. What do you want with me?”

“There’s someone I need to get rid of,” Bonny says, stepping back but keeping the knife’s tip to his neck. “The way I figure, you can’t be a complete idiot if you were able to talk Flint into keeping you alive. Follow me. If you try to run, I’ll cut your balls off.”

Across the street, the captain on the steps decries Eleanor Guthrie’s decisions, claiming they’re all made on womanly impulses. Anne Bonny leads him away, shoulders tense, through a winding route of alley ways and side streets, and finally up the rickety wood stairs that lead to the top floor of the brothel. It’s not Max’s room, but similarly decorated. The entrance door is latched, and after they enter, she’s quick to latch the doors to the balcony. Somehow, this has to do with Max, he’s guessing, because there’s no other reason to search out a crew’s new, barely adequate cook. 

Bonny sets her hat down on the worn wooden table, and runs her fingers through her long hair. “I’m the one who caught the whore escaping,” she says. Her voice is rough, and her face more delicate than John expected. “She spent the day working out business with Jack, so you have to be one who made sure the two of you were getting out of here.”

“The night worker at the docks is surprisingly sympathetic,” John says warily, thinking he should have anticipated something like this. 

“Anyway,” she says. “I just thought they’d kill her, you know? But what they’re doing—it ain’t right. Charles left. I don’t give a damn where. There are eight others, not including me and Jack, but one’s worse than the rest. Name’s Hammond. Jack won’t help me get rid of him.”

She doesn’t need to say explicitly what they’re doing to Max for John to know Vane’s remaining crew’s idea of punishment for her crimes against them is rape. As the son of a flamenco dancer who grew up an orphan surrounded by orphan girls, he has years of experience seeing the aftermath. “I’m not killing anyone,” he says, “though I think you could handle that on your own if that solved the problem. Has it occurred to you yet that the rest of the crew will just retaliate?”

“Then I’ll kill the rest of them,” she says, though that sounds like a  _ terrible  _ idea. “The problem is I can’t get him alone long enough. Jack won’t help. The fucking Guthrie cunt made sure no one will talk to us. I just need you to lead him away.”

“I think you’re missing the point,” he says, and continues, as she protests, “Max will be stuck wherever it is they’re keeping her even if this Hammond dies, right? If he dies, then they’ll know it was you, and probably toss you in with her.” Her jaw tightens. “I see I’m not the first person to say it. No, the only way this could work is if they were all killed, and you framed it on someone else.”

Logically, Eleanor Guthrie is the best choice, as her power’s waning anyway, but it doesn’t seem safe to remove the trade boss right as they’re about to introduce the  _ Santisima Trinidad  _ gold. Bonny’s brow knits, hopefully coming to the same conclusion. After a moment, she says, “It ain’t easy fighting eight men. I’d need Jack. But it will take a damn good plan to convince him to come along.”

John never thought this would be his life, spending a night planning murder with Anne Bonny hours before he’s meant to sail after the  _ Andromache.  _ First Morley. Now this. Piracy is every bit as awful as he imagined it would be, and he hasn’t even pillaged a merchant ship yet. 

“What’s the name of the captain preaching on the tavern steps?” he asks, and when she says the man’s called Lilywhite, he says, “All right. Captain Lilywhite orchestrates killing these men because he believes it will convince the island to damn Eleanor Guthrie once and for all—his intention is to frame it all on her, naturally. Tomorrow he’ll be going on about her again, and the two of you can go up with the bodies of whoever he sent and blame it on him publically. I suggest not killing them until after they’ve done at least some of your job for you.”

“How the—”

“The rest of your crew will come looking for you,” he says before she can ask how he expects to convince Captain Lilywhite into this. “I’ll tell them Jack didn’t lose all of the money. Where do you want to do this?”

Startled, she says, “The Wrecks is always good for a murder. Past midnight.”

“Good,” he says. “Should I bring Max back here?”

“The whore’s got nowhere else to go,” she says bluntly. “Lilywhite’s got a dumb fucking crew. Shouldn’t be too hard for you to get a couple to go along with whatever it is you’re saying.”

This is a bad idea, John thinks, but there’s no way out now without getting all of them killed. 

 

 

John singles out two of Lilywhite’s avidly listening men to tell them he knows Vane’s remaining crew is keeping a monetary prize in the Wrecks, and he’s willing to split it even with whomever retrieves it. “Problem is,” he tells Paul Whatsit and Connolly Whosit, “I’m a cook, you see, not a fighter. Can’t be expected to get past whatever guards they have on my own.”

Readily enough, they agree, and promise so many times that they’ve evenly split the share that they’re obviously already planning ways to kill him. Once that’s finished, his instructions carefully explained, he corners Hammond on a long dock not far from the white tent where they’re keeping Max, and tells his second lie. Just as readily as Paul Whatsit and Connolly Whosit, Hammond believes him, and calls for his other men. Hammond’s so unknowingly compliant that he doesn’t even leave the tent, or John, with a guard. John waits there on the dock, where the waves rush in and out over the sand beneath him and the moonlight turns the seafoam as silver as his name, until he’s certain no one is coming back. Then he turns, takes the torch from the pole beside him, and finishes the final part of the plan. 

Max pretends to be asleep when he enters, curled tightly into herself with her back to the tent’s entrance. Her white dress is filthy, speckled with blood and torn. There’s a shackle on her left ankle, the skin around the metal rubbed raw. 

“I don’t have a key for that,” he says, “so you’re going to need to stay very still while I pick it.”

Quick as a jack-in-the-box toy, she sits, twisting towards him, sending up a spray of sand caught on the blank beneath. “Get the fuck out,” she says to his surprise. “If they—”

“Oh, they’re long dead,” he says, kneeling beside her. It’s been years since he had to pick a proper lock, but it’s not a skill easily forgotten. “Anne and Rackham are taking care of them as we speak, but even so. It’s always safer to hurry.”

As he removes the pick Anne gave him, Max says, “I thought you were dead.” The stink of blood, sex, and stale seawater permeates off of her as he works, nauseatingly strong. 

She cringes when he applies pressure. “Well,” he says without bothering to apologize, since any attempt to be gentle will only elongate the process, “I assumed you were in Havana by now. No one bothers to tell the thief about the whore.”

“No one bothers to tell the whore about the thief.” 

More slowly than he wanted, he manages to open the lock so the shackle is easy to pry open. Again, she cringes, the metal clinging to the scraped skin, but she doesn’t make a sound. He helps her to her feet. Though she isn’t steady, she can walk, so wraps an arm around her shoulders and she tucks hers across his lower back, using him for support as they trek over the uneven sand. 

Fuck Eleanor Guthrie, John thinks abruptly. If she can depose  _ Charles Vane  _ of captaincy with one speech, she could have had his crew killed with just a word days ago. John, whose only loyalties on this island belong to James and Miranda, has no obligations to do her dirty work for her without a single thanks for it. 

Max doesn’t speak even as they reach Nassau Town, or the back of the brothel, where he half-drags, half-leads her up the stairs. When he pushes open the balcony door to her old room, the dark haired woman in a plaid corset and French mole drawn on her cheek who he hid with days earlier is there waiting for them. “Thank you,” she says when she gathers Max into her arms, who sags her whole weight against her with all the loose vulnerability of someone who finally feels safe. 

 

 

Even the cook and the accountant need to fight in the battle for the  _ Andromache _ , which John doesn’t learn until the  _ Walrus  _ has already set sail is for the guns Eleanor Guthrie thought she’d secured for them before her father betrayed her. 

“Have you ever shot one of these before?” Muldoon, one of the gunners with a bald head and wispy beard, asks over the sound of the wind that billows the sails out to their fullest. This morning, they have the weather on their side, with a good wind and clear skies, but that doesn’t leave John any less anxious. 

Muldoon indicates the pistol in John’s hand, a weapon that he has not, in fact, ever used before. “I’m shit with a pistol,” he says. Near the foremast, Dufresne, the accountant, runs his fingers through his hair repeatedly as he talks with Billy. 

As Muldoon removes the pistol at his waist, he says, “Everyone’s shit with a pistol. Even when they fire, they only hit about half the time anyways. You ever been in a fight before?”

When John was eleven and living with a gang of thieving orphan children in Bristol, he punched a boy named Solomon Little right in the mouth for threatening to hang his cat. Little didn’t hang Graciosa, but he beat John so badly that he had to bind his fingers with rope and sticks, and couldn’t move his shoulder without it hurting for a fortnight. That was the first and last real fight with a human being he had. 

He decides Muldoon doesn’t need to know that. 

“I helped kill a grizzly once,” he says instead, which is true, but he had a flintlock musket, which is more reliable than a pistol ever will be. 

“The fuck’s a grizzly?” 

“Nevermind.”

Without asking any further questions, Muldoon gives John a rushed lesson in how to get the most accuracy with a pistol, but neither actually fire. It’s better to conserve ammunition now. A fight against a man like Captain Bryson might take all day, Muldoon says. 

That was early morning. Near noon, they reach the  _ Andromache _ , and everything goes wrong. 

John doesn’t understand why Bryson has a secure bunker in a ship that, according to James (who received the information from Eleanor Guthrie), trades in china and white pine lumber. Then he joins Billy in breaking into the captain’s cabin, and understands. “Well, our information was wrong,” he says, riffling through receipts found in the locked top drawer while Billy reads through the papers on top. The one thing James knew about Bryson was that he traded with the Spanish and French, which is why he sent John in, but he hadn’t mentioned the Portuguese. “These are from Angola. This is a—”

“That woman in the interior,” Billy says, focused entirely on a three page letter in his hand. “Is she your fucking mother?”

“Excuse me?” John stands, clutching the receipts, to look the papers. It’s Miranda’s handwriting, and from his angle, and he can just make out,  _ for my son, John Hamilton.  _

“This is a letter,” Billy says, waving it in John’s face, “asking for a pardon for the Captain, and passage for the two of them, and her son. She says he’s never even committed a crime, because he’s only the cook.” Before John can argue, Billy says, “She also claims we’ll all kill the Captain if we learn of his betrayal.”

Outside, someone screams. They don’t have time for this. “I doubt there’s any real betrayal,” he says, once again put in a position where he needs to reassure his quartermaster without any proof that this is true. “What could he possibly do, keep  _ all  _ that gold to himself? If you think that’s possible, then you’ve never seen the Spanish’s idea of treasure. There’s nothing specific. It’s likely a lie she made to better convince the English to give him that pardon. She asked him not to bring me along. I supposed we should’ve expected a letter like this.”

“Shit,” Billy says, fingers clenching into a fist so the letter crumbles. “ _ Shit.  _ Is the Captain your father? Is that why—did you really end up with the schedule as some big coincidence?”

There’s not a word for James is, since he’s not John’s uncle legally or by blood, but he played that role. “He’s not my father,” he says, to keep it simple. “We were—separated in London. Can’t this wait until later?”

Shaking his head, Billy says, “No. Not when we’re losing daylight, Bryson and men are protected, and we’re all putting our faith in Flint. Why should I believe you over a letter found in Dyfed Bryson’s cabin?”

John holds up the receipts, plainly written in and signed in Bryson’s name, and the name of a translator. “Because I just found a way to end this fight,” he answers. “Maybe before nightfall.”

“You know—what is that?”

“Portuguese. This is a slave ship.”

As Billy, to John’s annoyance, stuffs the letter in his shirt, he says, “And now you read Portuguese. Let’s go tell the crew.”

They exit to find one of the gunners dead, his body pulled from below, where he tried to gather intelligence on the bunker. If this doesn’t work—if they can’t contact the slaves below, if the slaves can’t get free, if for some ungodly reason they won’t cooperate—then John, James, and this entire crew won’t make it off this ship alive. 

 

 

By the next morning, the  _ Walrus  _ is again anchored in Nassau’s bay, fitted with new guns. 

“I would have imagined,” Max says when John visits her, “you would be happy. That’s how men usually are when their crews return victorious.” 

It’s morning, and sunlight shines through the open balcony doors, turning her eyes an amber color and revealing waterdrops in her damp hair. Distracted, John nods, and takes another sip of rum. “Billy died last night,” he says. “Fell from the ship in a storm. The crew thinks James did it.”

Raising a brow, she asks, “And do you?”

He doesn’t answer. 

“Well,” she says, moving from the bed to join him on the short sofa, where he sits curled like a cat, a position adopted after years of trying to make himself invisible. She sits straight, her feet resting near his waist. There’s a bandage wrapped around her ankle. “A man like Billy Bones doesn’t lose his sea legs so easily.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” he says, pushing his hair from his face. “I saw a man trip off a cliff once. That was dry land.”

She looks down, away, at her knees. “I suppose you’re right,” she says, tone duller than when they first met. “I crossed Eleanor Guthrie. Look at me now.”

“Fuck Eleanor Guthrie,” he says, which he’s wanted to say for days now. As of yesterday morning, her position is returned, the straggling remains of the crew she ruined killed, and the man calling for her head murdered in her honor by his own followers. 

With a small, tired smile, she reaches forward and takes the rum bottle away from him. “To fucking Eleanor Guthrie,” she says, raising the bottle in a mock toast, before taking a long, well deserved drink. 

 

 

Even with the superior guns, it takes days to prepare for hunting the  _ Santisima Trinidad _ . In that time, John learns from Miranda how bake the type of bread commonly found around here, and he votes Dufresne into the position of quartermaster because Muldoon and Logan tell him that’s the best choice. 

When Anne and Jack find out, John’s in the brothel escaping the men, who still all want to know why an English cook knows Portuguese. “This is a disastrous decision,” Jack says when he and Anne are finished laughing at the  _ Walrus’  _ misfortune. “You can join our crew after this all blows up in your faces.”

“You don’t even have a crew,” John says, to which Anne answers that’s an issue they’re working on already. 

John doesn’t care one way or another about their new quartermaster, because he doesn’t care about most of the men, but learns quickly that Jack was right on the day Randall accuses him of thievery. 

When he does it, Dufresne, DeGroot, and Dr. Howell are all there waiting to hear it. “You’re a thief,” Randall says. “You stole the schedule.”

Even as John argues, he knows it’s useless, because Randall’s been here longer. “Why would I steal the schedule?” he says. “Do you think I’d still be alive if I had?”

Clearly, they do, because it isn’t long before he’s reading over an English medical document with the diagram of a man in the middle, trying to memorize its contents in five minutes to convince the four of them to keep their silence. They wouldn’t know to test his memory if they didn’t have verification from an outside source that the current schedule comes entirely from him. Even if that  _ didn’t  _ mean they’ll kill him regardless of what the result of this ridiculous test is, he’d still fail, so it’s pointless that he’s even trying. It doesn’t matter how long he’s been a part of English or French society; he’s always going to read Spanish faster than any other language. 

“Over a week with the schedule,” he says when Dufresne comes to give him a blank sheet of paper and another five minute’s time. “A  _ week.  _ Is your first real act as quartermaster really going to be to kill the Captain and cook?”

“It’s out of my hands, Mr. Silver,” Dufresne says as John draws the square surrounding the diagram. 

“No,” he says. “There are always choices. When we hang, that’s on you.”

Dufresne leaves without a word. As quickly as he can, John scribbles what he remembers— _ publick and privat practice _ , and  _ on the fubject of anatomie _ , and so on—until the quartermaster returns. “Wait here,” he says. “We’ll be back with our decision in a moment.”

“You wouldn’t believe this on Randall’s word alone,” John says as Dufresne goes to leave again. “Who told you?”

After a moment’s hesitation at the entrance of the tent, he says, “I won’t disclose my sources,” and walks out, leaving John alone with Randall, who hasn’t stopped peeling potatoes. 

It wasn’t Billy. Dufresne wouldn’t have called him Silver if it weren’t Billy. Since it wasn’t Billy, and couldn’t be James, then it only possibility left is Mr. Gates. 

In the tent over, Dr. Howell raises his voice, but his words are still unintelligible. It starts to rain, the drops going  _ pit-pat  _ against the canvas. Putting any thought of Mr. Gates away for now, he turns to Randall, and convinces him it’s his best interest to keep John alive. 

 

 

John tells James, “I think Mr. Gates tried to have us killed,” just before setting sail, knowing what the consequences could be, and knowing that the consequences of silence are worse. 

It’s just past dawn, with pale sunlight sneaking over the waves and peaking out through the rapidly dispersing rainclouds that tormented Nassau all yesterday afternoon and through the night. Despite the low light, James doesn’t have the candles lit, and half his face is cast in shadow as he looks up at John from his place in the captain’s chair. “I had a long conversation with Mr. Gates the other day,” he says, pressing his fingers together on his lap as John takes a seat at the large window’s padded sill. “He made it abundantly clear that he’d make no move against me. How do you know?”

Strangely embarrassed, John explains about Dufresne and Randall and the stupid test. “Billy hadn’t said anything,” he says. “There’s no point—Dufresne wasn't in a position of importance yet. Mr. Gates is the only option.”

There’s a knock on the door, sharp and loud. “We’re ready to set sail, Captain,” Mr. Gates says, voice muffled and gruff through the thick wood. 

“Set a course for St. Augustine,” James call back, and waits until the footsteps recede before saying, “You could have told me this  _ before we were on the ship _ .”

“Dufresne’s been watching me all day,” John says. “I didn’t have an excuse. The only reason I got in here at all was because no one was paying attention.”

Out on the deck, Mr. Gates and DeGroot shout directions to the crew, telling them to raise the sails. Today’s wind isn’t as strong as when they went after Bryson. Even with all sails fully erect, they won’t make as good time—and if one of those West Indies storms rear at random with all those sails raised, then the  _ Walrus  _ is fucked. 

James runs his hand down his face, looking older than his age. “I should have known,” he says, weary. “No one gives a damn about loyalty anymore.”

There’s something bitter in his voice that proves Billy did tell him about Miranda’s letter. Even without a detailed story of how they came to be here, John can still see that she only did it because she thought she was protecting him. Them. That was a trait of hers ten years ago. Regardless of what fabric her dresses are made of now, that doesn’t seem to have changed. 

For a few short months, John thought he had a chance to grow up to be good like that. Then he heard the Lord Proprietor call him a liability, ran, and turned into a thief. 

“Well, we’re both still here and underway,” John says, uncomfortable now. “It’s not as though he can do anything about it. It wouldn’t be safe.”

Sighing, James says, “A co-captain can contest the other captain’s word in any circumstance, so long as he’s speaking for the crew’s best interest,” as he takes the schedule from the desk. “It’s the same for a quartermaster. I don’t care what questions the men have. If we encounter the Spanish before we reach the  _ Urca _ , you’re talking.”

Though he can’t possibly be the only one on board who speaks it, he understands a native speaker is better than an Englishman stumbling through the accent. It’s time he thinks up a lie about where he comes from. More than likely, a good number of these men fought in the War. That prejudice runs deep. 

He agrees, and James stands, the schedule in hand. “We’ll keep an eye on him,” he says. “Until then, act like nothing’s out of the ordinary. Neither of us should talk to him alone.”

That doesn’t sound like it’s going to work, but John agrees again, and waits until James has the crew distracted before slipping out of the captain’s cabin and into the cook’s galley below deck. 

 

 

Everything that can go wrong does go wrong almost immediately, once they hit point a hundred miles south of  _ Cabo Cañareal _ . It isn’t there, like Captain Parrish predicted, and the crew is already angry after sailing the night through a storm just as bad as John feared. 

All of that would be bad on its own, but then a Man of War is here, equipped with all its guns, and James refuses to run. “It has to be a guard ship,” he says to the crew, who bristle collectively in exhausted anger. “This is Indian territory. There’s no port around for miles.”

Storm clouds billow overhead, so the the sun glares across the waves, and outlines the Spanish ship in a hazy grey. With grit teeth and eyes bulging, his expression mirroring the sky, Mr. Gates says, “Captain, a word in private?”

“Mr. Gates,” James says, ignoring his old quartermaster’s request, as he scans the enemy ship through his spyglass. “Signal your crew to ready themselves for attack. We’re going to distract the ship by claiming we’re being attacked. When they come nearer to help us—”

“Captain,” Mr. Gates says, louder this time. They’re standing on the quarterdeck, on the starboard side, watching it approach. “No Spanish ship is going to help an English crew.  _ A word, please. _ ”

Lowering the spyglass, James says, “Drop the anchor. We need to make it look like we’re drifting if we’re going to get in the right position to board her. We aren’t flying any colors. Local Spanish merchant ships aren’t marked. Mr. Gates, signal your men.”

“There are no Spaniards in this crew,” Dufresne says, joining Mr. Gates protests. He pushes his glasses up his nose. The new shark tattoo on his arm is still fresh, red and roughly scabbed. “We can’t convincingly—”

“I’ll do it,” John says, realizing that James is waiting for him to volunteer. “I can do it.”

For a moment, everyone’s silent, staring at him. Procrastinating even as the ship draws closer. Then Logan says, “First you say you can read Portuguese. Now you’re saying you speak Spanish. What next, we’re going to find out you aren’t even English?”

“My name’s John Silver,” John says. “Why the fuck do you think?”

Before Logan can respond, James holds up his hand for silence, and tells Mr. Gates to signal his crew. Scowling, downright petulant, Mr. Gates says, “How do we know you can convince them?”

“ _ España merecía ganar la guerra _ ,” John answers bluntly and adds, “ _ Larga vida el Rey _ ,” for good measure. 

Nicholas, who must understand Spanish, mumbles just loud enough for everyone to hear that John “isn’t fucking English.” 

Ignoring that, too, James says again for Mr. Gates to signal his crew. “We don’t have much time before they’re too close,” he says. “Lower the anchor. Men, keep out of sight. Silver, where’s your sailor’s coat?”

It’s below deck, because it’s too hot for even a cotton short coat, but he wears it to look the part of a merchant seaman. Next to John, who motions over the starboard wall for the Spanish ship, James crouches, pistol at the ready. The rest of the crew hides just out of sight on the lower deck, as directed. DeGroot steers them slowly, so they appear to drift. Just in view, Mr. Gates’ ship lurks, playing its role but easily out of range. 

“ _ Nos ayudan _ ,  _ por favor, señores, _ ” John calls, voice carried off by the wind. “ _ Las piratas! Nosotros estamos atrapados! _ ”

The ship’s first or second mate lifts his spyglass, squinting against the early afternoon sun, and answers, “ _ De donde navegan? _ ”

Before John replies, Dufresne says, “Don’t say Seville. They’ll ask for specifics on—”

“ _ Sevilla _ .” If they’re suspicious of his story already, he may as well keep them—and more importantly, James and himself—from dying. “ _ Llevamos azúcar de Cayo Hueso. _ ”

“Now we wait,” James says. 

Aboard the Spanish ship, the mate hands the Captain the spyglass. On the night he rewrote the schedule, James asked, “Do you feel like you’re committing treason, John?” Now there’s a rifle at John’s feet, one of the few on board, and he thinks this does feel like treason after all. 

“ _ Podemos ayudar _ ,  _ Señor _ ,” the Captain says, and drifts closer. 

James stands, still out of view of the Spanish ship. “Ready the guns,” he says. 

Then Dufresne raises his pistol. “Captain Flint,” he says. “As quartermaster, I charge you with the murder of Billy Bones.”

“ _ Señor _ ,” calls the Captain of the Spanish ship. “ _ Dónde están sus hombres? _ ”

Dufresne says, “Don’t answer,” as James shouts a command for the gunman to fire. When he turns, hand raised to signal, Dufresne fires. 

The ball lodges into his shoulder, so he falls back against the rail. As Mr. Gates shouts out in alarm, a gunner on the other ship—mistaking the sound of the shot as coming from the Spanish, presumably—lights a cannon. It explodes, and goes just wide of the Man of War’s portside stern. A moment later, the gunports open, and fire at once. 

Over the  _ boom-crash _ noise of it, James calls for the gunners to hold their fire until the ship is close enough to board. Dufresne and Mr. Gates, superseding his power, order them to go to their sister ship’s aid instead. 

“You’re going to get us all killed,” James says, using the wall to get back on his feet. “You’re going to—”

When Dufresne raises the gun again, John raises his rifle, though he’s never shot a man in his life and doesn’t think he can. “They’re all dead,” he says as the men fall silent. “Unless you have proof of your accusations, the gunners are going to back down and Mr. Howell will look at the Captain’s shoulder while I thank these gentlemen for their help.”

Slowly, the cannonfire dies. Screams echo across the water, closer to the entrance of the inlet, as the ship splinters and crashes, already sinking rapidly. There’s nothing they can do. John doesn’t give a damn about honor or revenge; he cares about leaving here alive. With all of the crew’s complaining about James’ recklessness and disregard for their personal safety, they really should agree. 

Dr. Howell steps forward. John lowers his rifle to see the Spanish ship drifting nearer again. “ _ Gracias, señores _ ,” he says, hoping they hear him over crack of the wind billowing the sails. “ _ Muchos de mis hombres están heridos. _ ” 

“ _ Cómo _ ?”

As John says they were boarded earlier by a crew claiming they were searching for  _ Urca de Lima _ , the ship drifts in range. Just another few exchanges, and he thinks he can have them initiate the launches themselves, because they’re nervous. Another mate joins the first and the Captain, and the three of them talk too low to hear, casting anxious glances towards the shore. If the  _ Santisima Trinidad  _ weren’t here, or weren’t coming, there wouldn’t be a need to act like that. 

After a moment, the Captain calls back that they can help. 

James breathes harshly as Dr. Howell pulls the ball from his shoulder. “What’s going on?” he says, voice rough from pain. “Did you fucking ask about the  _ Urca? _ ”

Before John can translate, Dufresne, who apparently can’t be upstaged by the cook, shouts, “Fire!”

The gunners fire, all at once. 

John meets the Spanish captain’s eye.

_ Do you feel like you’re committing treason? _

By the time the Man of War, still fully afloat even after the onslaught, retaliates, John’s already done the smart thing and jumped. 

 

When John was younger, he told  _ Sargento  _ Aurelio, the headmaster of the San Telmo orphanage, that he hated the sea and would sooner run to sunflower fields of Madrid than ever set sail. 

“ _ No _ ,” the man said, laughing through his mustache, but not unkindly. “ _ Has sido hecho para el mar. _ ” He said that anyone with eyes so blue would always find his way back to waves.

What he couldn’t have predicted was a scenario like this: John, twenty for just a month and a half, kneeling on one of the Floridas’ thin shores and coughing seawater from his lungs. It creates a puddle at his knees. Beside him lies the man who isn’t his uncle, unconscious with water leaking from the corner of his mouth. Just at the bottom of the dune is Mr. Gates, stuck full of debris from the  _ Walrus _ , and very, very dead. 

John always finds his way back to the waves one way or another, but his long gone headmaster would be so disappointed if he learned that his youngest orphan’s most literal return occurred in a fight against his countrymen. 

After the water finally leaves his lungs for good, and his breath comes back, Logan finds him. “This washed up on the beach, mate,” he says, and drapes John’s short coat over his shoulders. “Thought you might want it back.”

In the West Indies, coats are useless, but it was part of Parrish’s uniform, and something he kept. “Thanks,” he says hoarsely, miserably. “So, how much trouble are we in?”

Now far from Mr. Gates’ body, Dufresne preaches with same zeal as Captain Lilywhite. Logan musses his hair, following John’s gaze. “A lot, if I’m being honest,” he says, crouching beside him. “Everyone’s fucking pissed. Safe to say the Captain’s not the Captain anymore. Dufresne’s calling for your necks in a noose. Think he’s only going after you because you stuck a gun in his face, but enough of the men are pissed about you siding with the Captain that you’ve got a majority vote against you.”

“Dufresne’s the one who started this whole mess,” John says, cringing as he moves to sit. There’s nothing he can do for James now but wait. 

“Don’t hold out any hope for him,” Logan says, jerking his head toward James, “but you could still come out of this. Nicholas still says you ain’t fucking English, but you sure as hell convinced them to let us board.” He pauses, and says, “They’re  also saying you stole the schedule, for one. There’s also a whole crew of Spanish soldiers guarding the  _ Urca  _ gold just over the dunes. Guess they got shipwrecked in the storm.”

After the storm, they should have expected this. Even Spanish treasure ships can be wrecked. “I didn’t steal anything,” John says, looking over his shoulder to the line of dunes. “You’re telling me the gold is  _ right there?  _ And they still want to kill us? For what, being right?”

Logan claps his shoulder. “Look,” he says. “I don’t give a shit if you stole the schedule, or where you came from. You’re goddamn good at Spanish. There’s no hope for the Captain, you understand? If you make a run for that gold, I’m betting you can get those soldiers to think you’re from the Man of War. You can’t just stick around for him.”

For the first time, John spares a thought to what the crew thinks. Billy knew a bit of the story, but no one has any right to that information. “I see you don’t know many Spaniards,” John says. “They like their uniforms once they’re at sea.”

“If you change your mind,” Logan says, standing, “I’ll distract ‘em for you. At least Muldoon and Nicholas’ll help.”

Miranda will be devastated if they die, or if they don’t come back, and probably Max will be, too. As Logan walks away, John wonders if Anne would kill Dufresne for revenge, and thinks that might even make hanging worth it. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John successfully talks his way out of dying, and even manages to save his Captain. 
> 
> (or: John Silver is very bad at betraying King and Country)

The feared crew of the  _ Walrus  _ stand on a beach a hundred miles south of  _ Cabo Cañareal _ , dead in the heart of Indian territory with the Spanish surrounding them, and watch their old captain and cook walk to the sea. 

“I wanted a fighter,” James McGraw says when they’re out of the crew’s range of hearing, pausing to toe off his waterlogged boots, “not a—”

Whatever he was going to say next fails. Cook? Nephew? Friend? John watches James pull off first his left boot, then his right, and doesn’t care how that sentence was suppose to end. “I thought you wanted to make a run for it,” he says. The day crackles with humidity, a veil of heat rising off the sand near the water. “You really think we can take a ship just the two of us? When you just got shot in the shoulder?”

That’s James’ plan, as mad as it is: sneak aboard the Man of War, remove the night watchman, and then hope the rest of the  _ Walrus  _ crew joins them to take the ship. In exchange, Dufresne lets them live when they reach Nassau rather than kills them the moment they touch shore. 

“You’re not making a run for it, John,” he says, almost chidingly. “We’re, what, two hundred miles from St. Augustine? Even if you make it past the soldiers camped out on the beach, there are a hundred natives who’ll kill you long before you reach it.”

In a way, that’s preferable to possibly encountering the Spanish captain again, but John keeps that thought to himself. “You’re going to drown before you reach the ship,” he says instead, stripping off his coat and removing his own boots even as the French mentality reminds him the natives are reasonable, so long as you aren’t trying to kill or convert them. 

James ignores him, and wades into the water. In the Southern sunlight, his red hair is bright as a beacon to warn the Spanish of the oncoming invasion. Then he’s deep enough to dive, falling head first into the spitting foam, and disappears beneath the blue-green sea. 

Moments later, John joins him, and lets the warm, slow waves swallow him whole. 

 

 

John sits in the galley of the Spanish ship with a bosun’s whistle in his pocket and rope burns on his hands. Next to him is James, secured to his chair as surely as John is secured to his. They’re both wearing clothing stolen from dead men, maroon and black in color that disguise their original wearers’ blood. Around them are a few members of the Spanish crew, with the Captain leading them. His skin’s an olive brown, and brown hair curly, and even with his eyes as dark as his curls, he and John could be related. 

Outside the locked door is silent, though the signal’s raised and it’s nearly time for the rendezvous. The Captain places a knife down on the table, long and sharp, and then a bag that rattles with coins. “I could torture both of you,” he says casually, in that high class accent most of the boys at San Telmo had. “I should,” he adds, looking pointedly at John, “but that would take time. Here is a bad of gold. Whichever one of you tells me your purpose in being here can have it, along with your freedom.”

As James goes to insist the crew will receive nothing from them, John says, “ _ Yo soy Juan Palomo Flores _ ,” and effectively quiets him, “ _ y soy de Sevilla. _ ”

Without taking pause to breath, he spins a story of Juan Palomo Flores, the son of flamenco dancer Celestina Flores Santana, who sailed with a sugar merchant ship trading with the plantations at Cayo Hueso until Captain James Flint captured him off the coast of Miami to use in their search of the  _ Urca de Lima.  _ They held him at gunpoint, he says. He was going to warn the good Captain when they were close enough to board the  _ Walrus  _ themselves, he says. He says that this is his gamble for freedom, should they ever reach Nassau, because the man beside him is Captain Flint, and an hour from now, the rest of the crew will sneak aboard from the sea. 

It’s a long tale, but no one moves, or interrupts. When he’s done, the Captain bends at the waist, hands on his knees, and says, “ _ Me convence _ .”

So John does. 

Recalling his childhood, he talks of the honeysuckle bushes growing over the banks of the Guadalquiver, and the orphans playing war along the cobblestone streets. He talks about  _ Padre  _ Basilio in the cathedral, preaching the importance of conquest and conversion. When he mentions the orange trees’ branches sagging under the weight of their fruit, low enough for even children to pick for their mothers’ jams, the Captain even smiles. 

“ _ Quiere ir a patria? _ ” 

John swallows hard, and nods. Then the Captain nods, and the man behind him cuts the ropes. Holding out his hand, the Captain says, “ _ Yo soy Francesco Arenas Vargas _ ,” and adds to his men, once John’s standing and they’ve shook, “ _ Lo mata. _ ”

“ _ No, _ ” John says quickly as James jolts, understanding the sentiment if not necessarily the words, and the man beside him raises his pistol. Heart pounding, John reminds them that this is  _ Captain Flint _ —there’s not much they can do now to stop the attack, but if they drag the man out onto the deck and hold a gun to his head, they may be able to get the  _ Walrus  _ crew to back down. “ _ Ellos son muchos leal _ ,” he says. “ _ No arriesgarán su muerte. _ ” 

Beyond the door, the silence finally breaks as someone screams, followed by another. The man with the pistol looks up, distracted, which gives James enough time to ram his body sideways into his arm. There’s a  _ crack  _ when the man’s wrist smacks into a support beam, and he lets go of his pistol, which hits hard against the ground before skidding into a dark corner. James topples to his side onto the floor as the ship rocks, the chair breaking from the force of the fall. It’s disorientating, between the ruckus outside, and the ship’s movement; the third man fires his pistol, aiming at James, but the shot goes wide, and strikes the second man’s foot. 

Captain Arenas Vargas lifts his pistol, berating the third man—also Juan—while the second falls to his back, screaming. Before the Captain can fire, John grabs the knife from the table, and hits him with the butt in the back of his neck. 

“ _ Que _ —” he starts, but dies from a gunshot, the ball piercing his skull from behind. 

“Grab the gun, John,” James says, snappish, as he shoots the second man with Juan’s pistol. 

Outside, the screams continue, but it’s impossible to tell which crew is winning. John, feeling sick, takes the pistol from Captain Arenas Vargas’ lax, blood coated hand as James pushes open the door. 

 

 

Later, James says, “I can’t help you convince the rest of the crew to keep you alive,” as they stand alone on the poop deck while Dufresne reopens the discussion on what to do with the two traitors once they reach Nassau. 

The night air blows chilly off the water, so John breathes easier than he has in weeks. “I’ve got an idea,” he says, watching the small crowd below. Most of the crew argues that if it weren’t for he and James, they would still be stranded. 

After all he’s seen James do since he joined the crew, John doesn’t doubt he can regain captaincy within a week. It helps that Dufresne has no evidence for his accusations. Even so, seven days is a short window. No one can accomplish that alone. 

It’s that thought that leads John, by noon the following day, here by the roped in cargo, covered in bruises. Using Solomon Little’s childish bullying as a life lesson wasn’t his first choice, but it’s effective. Little was a shit thief, ugly as sin with a personality to match, but even Finley and Art, the ringleaders, never dared to throw him out. He kept a tally of everyone’s hauls, and whether they were distributing fairly. He shamed people mercilessly. Once when one of the girls fucked the Constable to stay out of jail, he ridiculed her so badly that no one would speak to her for a week, when he finally gave her a social pardon. Catherine, a girl John liked because she defended his cat, confessed that she’d kill him in his sleep herself if he weren’t her only way to keep a check on Mary Lou.

What John learned from that experience was this: a man doesn’t need to love you if he needs you. Love is fickle. Need is a steadfast addiction. 

“Becoming essential,” James says when he joins him in cargo bay, “shouldn’t involve becoming the physical manifestation of their stress relief. I’ve heard enough now to know they won’t go back on their word when it comes to you. Go into the interior. Live with Miranda.”

“While you’re still going after the gold?” John says, cringing when he adjusts himself and aggravates a bruise. Around them are sticks of gunpowder and rum. “In a Spanish Man of War? You’d be fucking hopeless without me if you encounter another ship.”

Shrugging, James says, “With a ship like this, I doubt we need to talk our way out of anything.”

“Are you forgetting that you were tied up here a day ago?” John says. “I was convincing them into keeping you alive until the crew showed up. I don’t want to stay on because I enjoy it. Frankly, I don’t like being a pirate much. If I’m being honest, I don’t particularly like sailing either. But someone needs to keep you alive.”

“How the fuck do you not like sailing?” James says, unsurprisingly ignoring the rest. “You’re half the age of most of this crew, and better trained than just as many.”

Frowning, John answers, “That’s why. I haven’t done any of this voluntarily.”

Like the the majority of the people in this world, he’s made most of his decisions based on a need to survive. James and Miranda  _ chose  _ to come to Nassau; John stepped aboard Parrish’s ship because he was the only Europe-bound ship recruiting in Boston Harbor that day. 

James thins his lips. “I understand,” he says, though he doesn’t. Having several bad options available because something bad happened isn’t the same as running to the Far North because his employer thinks he’s the son of Henry Every’s quartermaster. “That doesn’t make this any less ridiculous.”

“It will work,” John says firmly. “In large groups like this—everyone on this crew hates someone else. Give it a few days, and they’ll get too comfortable having that kind of information to ever let me go.”

“That might work for children,” James says. “It won’t work for grown men.” Sighing, he adds, “If this doesn’t work, swear to me you’ll make a run for the interior.”

Sometimes John can’t tell when Lieutenant McGraw ends and Captain Flint begins, but when it’s just the two of them, he’s solidly the James of ten years ago, more often than not. John wraps his arms around his knees, ignoring the pain in his abdomen, and says, “If you fuck up, you let Miranda ask for those pardons, and we go to Boston, or New York, or you learn Spanish, and we go to Seville. Understood?”

Disgruntled, James says, “Understood,” and returns the subject to the logistics of regaining his captaincy. 

 

 

By the time the  _ Walrus  _ returns to Nassau, James is Captain, John is an integral member of the crew, and one fourth of their numbers are dead. Manipulating Dufresne into a fight against a superior merchant ship was the only option given the time frame, but the consequences were severe. The remaining crew are exhausted, sick of the sea, and want nothing more than to step ashore again. 

Unfortunately, sailing into a bay in a Spanish Man of War also has its consequences, so they dock the ship just out of sight while James and John go to town, alone. Before they separate, James says, “This will take a while. Get the supplies, and wait for me at the rendezvous point. Don’t stop to see that whore you like.” 

John, a bit childishly, goes to see Max first. 

“ _ Mon chou! _ ” she says when she sees him, smiling brilliant, and pulls him into a tight hug. “I hadn’t thought you’d come back alive.”

“I almost didn’t,” he says, untangling himself. They’re downstairs by the bar, surrounded by patrons and whores, but no one looks over. “What are you wearing?”

Her dress is one Miranda might have worn once, hooped and down to floor. It’s a cream color—cotton, not silk, for a more breathable fabric—and covered in pink lace. Underneath she’s wearing a corset, though it’s not tied tight. The sleeves fall to her elbows. Even her hair is different, tied back in a low bun with a net over it. If it weren’t for her skin, she could blend in easily with London’s high society. 

Smiling, she spreads her arms, and says, “I’m the new Madame.”

“If it isn’t John Silver!” 

Before John can react, Jack appears behind him, slapping a hand across his back, and hands him a pint of ale. Anne materializes beside him, leaning against the counter, pressed arm to arm with Max. “The fuck are you doing here?” she says. Her hat’s off, and her red hair pulled away from her face to ward off the heat that always seems worse here than outside. “How did Flint make it into the bay?”

Even the brothel, with all its spies, can’t know about the Man of War when none of the men are ashore. Confused, he asks, “What do you mean?”

Max and Anne share a glance. Slowly, Jack lowers his hand. “While I have many important questions for you,” he says, “all of which involve the very important matter of the  _ Urca  _ gold, I think you better get back to your crew. Am I right in assuming you aren’t yet in the bay?”

“The Captain’s here to announce us,” John says, no less confused and not appreciating the sensation. “He said Horn—”

“That’s the problem,” Max says. “There is no Hornigold in the fort these days. He—”

“Charles took it,” Anne cuts in, folding her arms. “We all assumed he was dead. Turns out he got himself a new crew, and they invaded from the interior. That fucker.”

Though John doesn’t know much about Charles Vane, he knows enough to guess that even if James announces himself, there’s no safely entering the bay now. “And the two of you?” he says, looking from Jack to Anne. “Why aren’t you in that fort with him?”

With something like a laugh, Jack says, “Charles would only have us if I was no longer quartermaster. The new crew voted one of their men, of course. I refuse to rejoin his just to be demoted to what? A glorified day worker? No, not when we’re building something for ourselves. You’re looking at Jack Rackham, Captain of the  _ Colonial Dawn. _ ”

“Congratulations,” John says, distracted, and asks, “How did he react? About his crew.”

After a short silence, Anne says, “He found the rest of Lilywhite’s old men, and had ‘em all killed.”

John places his undrunk pint on the counter, and promises to come back soon. 

 

 

When John found James a half hour after he left the brothel, he was with Hornigold, and the two were already calling for a fight. “This is an insult to us all,” Hornigold said, sitting in his high backed chair under the shade of his large tent, surrounded by his crew. “Unfortunately, my ship is in range of the fort’s cannons. With your help, we can rectify the situation.”

Later, once they relocate to the ship, John joins the captains and quartermasters in the captain’s cabin, sitting on the windowsill. They use the word “war” like that’s what this is, rather than a short skirmish between a few pirate crews over a misguided sense of honor. By the time Hornigold’s quartermaster mistakes John as someone important, and asks, “What do you suggest, boy?” the afternoon is already half over with nothing close to resolved. 

Though Dufresne’s expression sours, he doesn’t correct the other quartermaster’s misunderstanding. Neither does James. Even Hornigold, who must have some idea of who John is, says nothing. 

“Well,” he says, finding his footing in the conversation. He was content acting as James’ shadow. “Right now Charles Vane is protecting the beach, right? People like the one protecting them a lot better than the one attacking. It won’t make much sense to stage an attack if the street tries to create a barricade against you. You need to manipulate the opinion of the situation in the town. Sailing a Spanish ship won’t help anyone’s view of you.”

Before John left Spain, a combined Spanish-French fleet attacked various islands in the West Indies. Though he doesn’t know specifics, he assumes New Providence was one of them, and that a good number of people on that beach have been around long enough for a Spanish Man of War to be a bad reminder of the past. From the pinched expression Hornigold gets, John assumes he’s right. 

“Go ashore,” James says, without letting the others discuss it. John was going to suggest someone the beach knew, if only because he doesn’t want to be anywhere near the cannonfire start the morning. “We’ll begin firing on the south wall at dawn. Stay away from the fort when the time comes.”

As he slips from the windowsill, Hornigold holds up his hand and says, “Wait. I can’t in good conscience let you leave until I know what you’re going to tell those men.”

“I don’t know,” John says, shrugging. “It all depends on how they feel. The point is just to get across that you’re right and Captain Vane is wrong.”

“That simple?” Dufresne says, as though he hadn’t just spent the past week listening to John’s morning addresses. “Say this is that, and you think the town will believe you?”

John answers, “I can try,” because he doesn’t want to explain to a person like Dufresne that a man can make anything the truth so long as he says it’s so with enough conviction in his voice. 

 

 

Somehow, Billy Bones returns from the dead, and John hides him away in one of Hornigold’s empty tents with a crippled Randall acting as his guard. 

When he wakes, John’s there with a cup of water and bit of bread in hand. “It’s almost a shame you’re back,” he says as he passes the old quartermaster the food and drink. “We had a funeral for you. It was very touching. Several of the men even cried. But Dufresne’s a shit quartermaster, so I can’t complain that much.”

Billy blinks slowly, then downs the water in one long gulp before sputtering. “More,” he says, hoarse. After he’s had a second cupful, he says, “Are you shitting me? The accountant’s quartermaster now? What the fuck happened while I was gone?”

“People like him because he doesn’t like the Captain,” John says. He knows better than to be too explicit with Randall around, who sits silent vigil at his back. “We don’t have the gold. There was a shipwreck, so it’s currently lying on the beach guarded by a battalion’s worth of Spanish soldiers. But we managed to get a Spanish Man of War, so it wasn’t entirely useless. Well, except that Dufresne is a shit quartermaster, ordered fire too early, staged a mutiny in the middle of the attack, and nearly got everyone killed just to blame it on the Captain and me. He was even the Captain, temporarily. That’s all resolved now, but very recently, so please understand that I can’t let you leave until I know what you’re going to say.”

After Billy swallows a chunk of bread, and processes the information, he says, “You’re telling me you were were on the bad end of a mutiny, and you’re still breathing? How the fuck did that happen?”

“We like him,” Randall says, helpful and monotone from the entrance of the tent. 

“Jesus,” Billy says, shaking his head. “And you said you aren’t—” He looks to Randall, and falls silent, censuring himself. However this conversation goes, they’ll have another version of it later. “And if I say something you don’t like? Will you kill me?”

Randall says, monotone and unhelpfully, “We like him too.”

Despite what John says, he’d not asking for the sake of the crew, which Billy should be smart enough to figure out. “No, I’d have to let you go,” he says. “It’s luck I’m the one who found you. I just prefer to have some advance notice.”

Billy rolls his neck so the bones crack. “I,” he starts, then stops before continuing, “The Captain tried to save me. I lost my footing.” 

For the first time since the blacksmith pushed John into the tent where they’d laid out Billy, he loses the tension in his shoulders. “Good,” he says. “How—”

Again, Billy shakes his head. “No,” he says. “It’s not good,” and he explains how he survived, that the English Navy fished him from the sea like some prize catch and tortured him until he got himself free. “Flint was right,” he says. “They’re stationed there, like they’re preparing to attack. Petty fights over who’s Captain now doesn’t matter. Flint’s the only one with the training who knows how to handle what’s coming.” Then he asks, “Where’s Gates?”

“Gates died,” John says, taking in what it means to have the English stationed so close by, “in the first fight against the Man of War, along with all of his crew, and a good number of ours. I can’t say for certain for the rest of the crew is here yet,” he adds, and tells Billy about the recent events with Charles Vane. 

“I’ve only been gone a few fucking weeks,” Billy says, fingers curled into fists in his tattered pants. “How did everything go to shit that quickly?”

As John says, “I’ve been asking myself that every day,” an explosion rocks the beach and this violent, petty argument finally starts. 

 

 

At nightfall, Miranda appears, her bonnet lopsided on her neat bun, and skirts browned from the dusty interior roads. “They have Abigail Ashe,” she says after she and John exchanged hellos and established that no, she isn’t leaving. “I’m here to retrieve her. Then we can take her back to her father and negotiate the future of Nassau.”

A few curious crewmates throw indiscreet glances in their direction from where they’re crowded by Hornigold’s tents listening to Billy talk of Captain Flint’s heroics, but no one comes closer. It’s raining in a slow, steady drip so that the air smells sweet, but Miranda’s the only in area with a parasol. 

Though John doesn’t often doubt what Miranda can do, breaking into a heavily guarded fort doesn’t sound like a skill she has. “Who’s helping?” he asks. “Who’s Abigail Ashe? Ashe as in Peter Ashe? He had a daughter?”

“Eleanor cares more about the stability of this place than she does Charles Vane,” James answers, leaning his side against the support beam of the porch to one of the few permanent shacks built on the sand. “She’s getting Abigail out from the inside. Miranda will meet them. It seems safer that she sees a familiar face, and she never met me. And yes, she’s Peter Ashe’s daughter.”

Last John heard, Peter Ashe was now the governor of the Carolinas, and he’s made a career of killing alleged pirates. “How did Vane end up with her?” he says, trying to recall if he ever met her during his time in London. 

Miranda explains what her pastor explained to her, that Charles Vane took her captive after he killed another captain who originally held her. “The poor girl must be terrified,” she says. 

“Hornigold is against the idea,” James says as John goes to ask if this girl has dark hair, dark eyes, and a love of books. “He won’t see above his personal vendetta, and called for a vote among the men. We need to convince them this is in their best interest.” 

“By ‘we’ do you mean me?”

Sighing, Miranda says, “I don’t see why  _ John  _ has to be in charge of getting  _ you  _ support.”

“Because they listen to me,” he says, frustrated. “What about the gold? They’ll want to know.”

James inhales sharply. “Tell them that’s still our ultimate objective,” he says, in the distracted tone that means this is a lie. “The moment this is finished, we sail for the Floridas.”

“You want to return this to English colonial rule,” John says, running his fingers through his hair, “but still want me to tell the men that you’ll be going after  _ Spanish gold? _ Does it really take  _ me  _ to remind you that England defeated Spain in a war less than a year ago? I understand that the English narrative is that France usurped the Castilian throne, but it wasn’t like that for Spain. You’ll humiliate them—and they will attack here with the fleet in Havana, right after you destroyed the island’s best means of defense.”

Though the English had their victory, Spain still has their pride. James looks at John for a long, tense moment before he says, “For now we tell them what they need to hear. We’ll figure out the rest once we reach Charles Town.”

“This is a bad—”

“If the men listen to you,” Miranda says, placing a hand on his arm, “then tell them what they need to hear. There’s a terrified girl in that fort right now, and we need their support to get her home.”

Regardless of what James thinks, he can’t both accept England and take from Spain. Somehow, John needs to remove the gold as a viable option, which will also discredit Hornigold, or this will get them all killed.

 

 

 

John’s opportunity to save the situation comes just before midnight, when his two scouts return with news that the gold is unguarded. In no time at all, he swears both to secrecy with an inventive lie, and slips away to the brothel. 

After all,  _ James  _ can’t both secure the gold and negotiate Nassau’s return to colonial rule, but that doesn’t mean someone else can’t. 

Somewhere several doors down, Logan fucks Charlotte, so John breaks into Max’s room through her balcony. He isn’t expecting to find her in bed with Jack and Anne. For a moment, he stands there in shock, before trying to hurry out, and bangs his elbow on the shuttered door. The noises stop, the mattress creaks, and Jack says, “Can’t we just get some fucking privacy?” as Max laughs. 

“What happened?” Anne asks, tugging at the sheets as Max slips from the bed to grab a robe. “It ain’t like you to come in uninvited.” 

Clearly, Anne doesn’t know him very well to have such a high opinion of him, but John’s too flustered to correct her, and wouldn’t even if he weren’t. “I had—have a business proposition,” he says as Max ties the robe and Jack reaches over the side of the bed to pick up his discarded pants. John pointedly does not look down, because this might be a common aspect of everyday life that embarrasses him, but obviously doesn’t the other man, who doesn’t hide his waning erection while dressing. “I’d love to say it can wait, but it can’t.”

Max’s hair is mussed and the charcoal around her left eye smudged. “Is this about the gold?” she asks, reclining on her short sofa. “We’ve been waiting for news on it since your crew returned, and yet only one came to call.”

As Jack tosses Anne her clothes, John says, “Well, Logan’s information will be outdated,” and turns to give her privacy. He can’t say he ever expected this, but he doesn’t often look into the intimate relationships of other people. “According to the crew, the Spanish came to reclaim its gold, and now all of it is gone. According to my scouts, a sickness swept through, killed all the soldiers, and now the gold lies completely unprotected. I was wondering if you three might like to organize a trip.”

“Let me see if I understand you correctly,” Jack says, stepping into view so he’s outlined in the sunlight. Then he pulls shut the balcony doors, and they all fall back into shadow. “The gold is ripe for the taking, and you’re willing to betray Captain Flint over it? And here I thought you were his confidant.”

“We’re going to Charles Town,” John says. “There’s this girl Vane had, but now we have her, and the Captain wants to deliver her to her father. I don’t know. Better I give the location to you then some English privateers find it, or the Spanish really does come back to claim it.”

After giving John permission to turn back, Anne says, “What do you want in return? No one gives away information like that for free.”

“The two that delivered the information receive equal shares,” John says, and takes a deep breath before adding, “My only contingency is that when this news breaks, you tell Captain Flint you bought the location from them.”

Anne and Jack protest in disbelief, and Max cuts in quickly, “We carve out what should have been your share and divide it between the three of us. If you’re ever in want of money, all you need is to ask for a loan that you will never have to pay back. That will be your share.” 

That sounds safe. Maybe he can give some to Miranda. “All right,” he says. “Get me a map. I’ll mark the location.”

Anne finds a map of the area, and places it next to the quill and inkwell on Max’s vanity. “Isn’t that all Indian territory?” she says as John circles the wreck. 

“There’s a small settlement nearby,” he says. “It was supposed to take water there. Its ultimate destination was Havana.”

“And are you positive,” Jack says, leaning over his shoulder to inspect the map, “that there are no soldiers left?”

Moving away, John answers, “I’m only repeating what my scouts told me. Oh, and Billy Bones returned from the dead. That’s true, in case you’ve heard.”

“That’s good,” Max says, smoothing her hair with her fingers. “One less worry for your crew. Your captain must be happy.”

“He says the English Navy is stationed not far away,” he says, “so watch out for their sails when you leave.”

“And you will watch out when you are in Charles Town,” she says. “It won’t do to have our newest partner swing.”

There’s a knock on the door, and Charlotte whispers through it, “Max, I’ve got it!”

Max laughs again, carefree and genuine and entirely unlike when he left, as Jack sighs, and Anne shakes her head. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John sails to Charles Town, and gets very, very hurt. 
> 
> (or: this is the chapter with poetry and dreams)

On the night John left London, he walked with a girl named Abbie two years his junior to the library to escape their parents’ party. Neither of them gave a surname. Ten years later, they’ve both grown taller, and their bodies have changed, but they look so much like their childhood selves that it’s impossible not to recognize each other on sight. 

When she sees him, her blank expressionlessness disappears, her lips parting and eyebrows raising. “John,” she says, stepping away from Miranda and James, who speak huddled together in low voices with Eleanor Guthrie. “Could it really be you?”

There’s a hint of the New World in her accent, but hardly enough to be noticeable. Her dress is torn and dirt streaked. Her face is slicked with grime, glaring against her aristocratic white skin. There are twigs and bits of caked mud in her hair, which is wild, and loose, and knotted in tangles. 

Miranda, James, and Eleanor turn as John forces himself to breathe. “Abbie,” he says, looking her over from head to foot. “What—”

Suddenly, she releases a sound like a sob, and covers her mouth with her fingers. “Am I going really home?” she says, looking from him to Miranda to Eleanor and back again. “I am?”

With a small smile, Miranda wraps an arm around her shoulders, and rests her opposite hand just above her elbow. A breeze blows by, sweeping their skirts to the side so they wrap together. “Yes,” Miranda says. “You’re safe. You’re among friends. No one’s going to hurt you.” 

Abigail Ashe, daughter of every pirate’s worst nightmare personified, weeps openly into Miranda’s shoulder so her tears leave clean lines down her cheeks. “Home,” John hears her say. “I’m going home.”

 

 

Now that Miranda’s on the ship, there’s no hiding John’s her son, so he doesn’t bother; he keeps in the crew’s good graces with his morning addresses and fair humor, and tells a basic truth to any who ask. Yes, she’s his mother—adoptive, of course. Yes, ending up on this crew was a coincidence. No, he did not grow up an English nobleman, nor did he really live long in England at all. No, Captain Flint is not his father. 

Despite his best efforts, the crew doesn’t seem inclined to believe the last one. 

He never  _ actively  _ hid who he was, except his place of birth. It was just a silent agreement between he and James that it was better for the crew not to know. But the secrecy is done away with, so he takes the opportunity to spend time with Miranda and Abigail without worrying about anyone’s opinion. Abigail writes mostly, but clings to he and Miranda as something familiar during mealtimes or when she needs company. Maybe out of necessity, or maybe because they tell her she can, she trusts James. Somehow, out of the rest of the crew, the only other two she’s willing to talk to are Mr. Scott as the new quartermaster (Dufresne left,  _ finally _ ) and Billy—but mostly Billy. 

Five days into their voyage, dark clouds roll over with the promise of a rain, which starts at around dusk without a strong wind to accompany it. John cooks a stew below as Miranda sits on the bench, listening to Abigail read from a book of poetry she brought from home, both hiding from the weather. “‘Let sea-discoverers to new words have gone,’” she reads. “‘Let maps to others, worlds on worlds have shown, Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.’”

“Very fitting,” Miranda says with one of her small, soft smiles, as John pushes up his sleeves. His hair’s getting too long, and he has it tied away from his face to stave off the heat. When they return, he’s having Max make good her offer to cut it. “I find John Donne has a poem accurate to every occasion. You may not remember, John, but I read you Donne to help you with your vocabulary.” 

Miranda read him many books and poems to help him with his vocabulary when he was young, and often scrambled Spanish and English to make sense of what he wanted to say. “Shakespeare is the one I remember specifically of the English writers,” he says as he drops in the chopped potatoes. 

“Well, Shakespeare is certainly the most memorable,” she says, rearranging her skirts. She’s wearing the same one she wore on the first day John saw her in Nassau, and Abigail is in her spare, which is clean, but too big. 

“I remember the day I met you very clearly,” Abigail says, shutting the book as her cheeks flush. “I—It was hard not to. A Spanish boy in Lord and Lady Hamilton’s garden. But, well, I thought you were a well dressed servant. I didn’t know who you were until Father said John Hamilton disappeared.”

Until last week, John hadn’t spared a thought to Abbie since he left England, but he does vaguely remember she offered to read to him. When they were young, he just assumed it a common pastime for English children. “You thought I was illiterate?” he says, finally understanding why she was offered, and why she was surprised he was allowed to take the library key from Thomas’ study. 

Blush worsening, she says, “My father must have told me about you, but I probably wasn’t paying attention.”

“We wanted to introduce you two,” Miranda says, leaning back against the support beam and watching them. “London could be so lonely for children. Peter asked at that same party if you would like to take lessons with her and her governess until language skills matched your age.”

Because of Thomas, she doesn’t mention London that often, usually preferring to exchange stories about their years apart. Now she sounds wistful, looking at the two of them as though she and Peter planned a lot more than language lessons for their son and daughter. 

Abigail runs her thumb across the corner of the book. “I suppose things could have been very different,” she says. 

“No,” Miranda says, gaze drifting to the stairs, where rain water leaks down in a slow but steady dribble, bringing with it the muffled sound of the crew shouting. “Our choices then didn’t matter much. We all would have come to Nassau eventually.”

Nassau is Rome for the people society discarded, and one way or another, all roads leads back to its shores. 

 

 

Neither James nor Miranda let John go ashore when they reached Charlestown, so Abigail gave him her journal with the hope that he’ll read it and think of her, and left that as their goodbye. Not long after, he’s below deck tucking it away with his few belongings hidden in the hold space when he hears the shuffle around the corner. 

There’s nothing about it that’s out of place, but the cool, late winter night air suddenly grows colder. Slowly, careful not to make a sound, John stands and walks lightly across the weather worn floor boards. Further away, he hears a second shuffle, then a third, and finally a rush of heavy footsteps going up the stairs. He gropes at his waist for the long knife he’s never had to use. Then he takes a deep, silent breath, and turns the corner. 

In front of him is Randall, dead with his back propped up against the wall, his legs and arms splayed and neck tipped back too far, slashed so deep that John sees torn tendons and blood slicked bone. Nausea bubbles from his stomach into his throat, pushing at a scream. His hand holding the knife shakes. Since he joined the crew, he’s witnessed more death than he ever wanted, but not like this. Not so nakedly as this. 

Before he can make a sound, a hand covers a mouth. He jerks back with the knife, but a second hand catches his wrist, and Billy says, his voice low, “Breathe. He’s not the only one. Vane will know to look for us.”

When he steps away, John doesn’t relax, but he doesn’t scream, either. “Who?” he asks, following Billy deeper into the ship, into the nooks Vane won’t know to find. 

“Everyone off shift,” he answers, ducking beneath a low beam near the hole leading to the bowsprit. 

That’s only a small number of people—both Nichols and Vincent, his scouts and co-conspirators, along with Lars, Joshua, and Logan. Vaguely, he thinks that at least he can blame the sale of the gold on the two of them without having to worry about their counterargument, and then he remembers he’s going to have to tell Charlotte that Logan’s dead. 

Billy says, “The crew will fall apart with Vane. If we draw him down here—”

“We need to stop them from sailing away first,” John says. “I can’t fight for shit. Wait for anyone that comes down.”

“Hey.” Billy grabs his arm as he moves towards the exit to the bowsprit, heart pounding with nerves but knowing it’s the only way. Though John half expects Billy to argue, all he says is “Put the knife between your teeth. It’ll be easier to get than out of its sheath.”

The hilt tastes of metal and sweat. As John slips out, struggling to keep his grip on the slick wood, he hears Billy walk away. Waves roll beneath him, cracking loudly against rocks just below the water’s surface. Someone on the deck, Vane’s crew calls out to each other, and John’s crew heckles them. He’s in perfect view of anyone on deck, the full moon’s light illuminating his slow journey to the thick ropes keeping the masts from going slack. 

When he succeeds in cutting the forestay loose, it snaps away so quickly he nearly falls off the bowsprit trying to avoid it. He slides down, almost toppling into the sea, and knocks his shin and head against the entrance to the ship. At some point during the climb down, he lost the knife. 

He doesn’t hear a fight, which is a bad sign, but Billy left him his second pistol. Though his aim’s nothing impressive, it’s better than being defenseless, so he takes it, and creeps back into the hold space, avoiding the loudest boards. Barrels of water are tethered in nets to the wall, their contents sloshing audibly every time the ship rocks and hindering John’s ability to hear anyone coming. Even so, Vane’s never been on this ship before, and doesn’t know about creaks or cracks; it isn’t long before a floorboard screeches, and gives his position away. 

“It took four men to take down your bosun,” Vane says, greeting John’s raised pistol with his own. “I knew it would only take one of us to deal with you.”

This is the man who let eight of his crew members rape a girl for days as retribution because he and his quartermaster let the real prize fall into the hands of a rival captain—who murdered two crews in their entirety during just the short time John’s been on Nassau. Who just killed  _ this _ crew. He can’t be more than ten years older than John, who’s been hearing stories of him for longer than that. If Vane wanted, he could pull the trigger on his pistol before John could fire his. 

“And yet you came yourself,” he says, sounding more confident than he feels. “You know I just sabotaged your chances of leaving. But you still haven’t killed me. Why is that?” He scrambles to think of an answer before Vane decides he talks too much, and quickly says, “They aren’t your crew, but their opinion matters to you more then anyone up there.”

It isn’t a question. Through John’s conversations with Jack and Anne, he managed to infer the only people Vane cares about are the two of them, and Eleanor Guthrie. This crew is a means to an end in avenging his honor. 

“They won’t be happy about if I come back with you dead,” Vane says, somehow even gruffer than usual, “but they’ll get past it, so give me an excuse, and I’ll shoot you now. If you don’t want to die, follow me. You’re joining your crew, or you’re joining mine.”

“Join your crew?” John repeats, surprised. “What the fuck do you want with me?”

Vane begins to answer, but is abruptly interrupted by a man with a New World accent calling out the news that Captain James Flint is to stand trial for high seas piracy, and if this ship isn’t gone by morning, the town of Charles Town is at liberty to fire on them at will. Even as John stands immobile with shock, pistol outheld, Vane lowers his, and says, “Your best rigger is helping mine fix that forestay. This crew is now under my—”

“No.”

“What?”

Regaining his senses, John finally lowers the gun, and devises a plan. “Captain Flint is the most well known pirate in Europe and the New World since Edward Teach,” he says, and watches Vane tense at his old captain’s name. “If he dies, the pirates of the West Indies will lose all credibility. The English Navy is already stationed only a few islands away. How long until they invade if that happens? Peter Ashe is a political performer. He’ll turn that trial into the most sensationalized hanging in years.”

For a while, Vane is silent. Then he says, “And what makes you think I can’t get that credibility back?”

“Because Eleanor Guthrie deposed you and reappointed you at will,” John answers, “but before she openly backed Captain Flint, I talked the beach into disagreeing with her, and with you, and with Hornigold. Your crew’s reputation pales in comparison to this one, and you know it.”

Vane punches him, hard, so he stumbles back and hits into their stores of salted fish. “I’m not a fucking idiot,” he says, pressing his pistol beneath John’s chin. “Lilywhite never would’ve had the balls to go against me. A couple of his men couldn’t have killed mine. I don’t know how, but I know the three of you fucking did something to save that whore. You’re fucking worse than she is.”

Though he doesn’t say, John assumes “she” refers to Eleanor. “Regardless,” he says lightly, “I’m right. If you don’t get Flint free, then Nassau as we know it is gone. And I know how to do it.”

“Of course you fucking do.”

John breathes deep, and explains his plan. 

 

 

Before John leaves, he trips, and knocks into the man holding the keys. “Sorry,” he says as Vane pulls him away, and while everyone is focused on his face, he drops them into DeGroot’s lap.

He doesn’t see if Vane’s crew finds them before he’s over the edge, and in one of the longboats. 

“You better be fucking right about this,” Vane says as they row to shore. Abigail’s book lies between them, an object of privacy about to be pried open and invaded. 

“It will work,” John says firmly, though he never thought to factor in the idea that Peter Ashe  _ wouldn’t  _ agree to help. 

Rowing ashore doesn’t take long. Vane’s crew stays out of sight among the rocks, ready to climb over the walls and kill the guards to gain access to cannons when the time comes. Meanwhile, Vane and John separate—Vane to the town square, where the trial is already taking place, and John to the tallest building in town. After all, he told Vane below deck. The only evidence more convincing than Abbie’s hand is Abbie herself. 

There aren’t many guards patrolling the streets, since they’re focused around the trial, and John sneaks to Ashe manor easily. It’s been years since he’s forced his way into a house, but like picking locks, that’s not a skill easily forgotten. Slowly, so as to avoid the slaves on the property or the view of anyone in the windows, he moves closer and looks for Abbie. When he finally sees her, she’s standing directly in front of an open window, expression blank. Her blue dress fits her. There’s a ribbon in her styled curls. 

Uneasily, he thinks she reminds him of doll. 

After a quick glance around, he feels safe in declaring there’s no one in the immediate vicinity outside, nor in any of the windows. He steps out directly, watches Abbie’s wide eyes widen further, and then dashes into thick, winter bare bushes below that window that offer little protection for anyone who bothers to look. 

Though her voice is muffled through the glass, he still clearly hears her say, “Can you fetch the book of poetry I brought with me please? I want it for the road,” and another woman’s voice answer yes, she’ll only be a moment.

Seconds later, Abbie pushes open the window. “Are you here to stop the trial?” she asks. Her eyes are wet, and her cheeks stained from recently shed tears. 

“Yeah,” he says, and holds out his hand. “Will you help?”

She accepts his hand, and climbs over the window, heedless of her thick skirts. Their breath blows thin clouds of steam every time they breathe. “Oh, John,” she says quietly as they step away, back towards the fields. “I’m so sorry. I tried to stop it—”

Inside, the woman’s voice calls, panicked, “Lady Abigail? Lady Abigail? Abigail?”

“It’s all right,” he says, leading her along through the waving stalks in the bright, sunlit morning. He doesn’t know what the crops are. He doesn’t care. He just needs to get to the town square before anyone finds them. 

Just as they reach the property’s outer edge, he hears the sound of soldier’s boots, and tugs her inside an ordinary house. Already, Abbie has a tear in her dress hem, and bits of twigs caught in her hair. Too slowly, the town’s stationed soldiers march past, their boots beating steadily against the packed street. She hardly breathes. He clutches at the pistol Vane gave him, his knuckles white. When they’re finally gone, he peeks out the window, then goes to push open the door. Before he can, she snags the back of his shirt, keeping him in place. 

Desperate and low, she says, “Listen to me, John.” Her voice sounds thin. “Before we—My father’s man shot Lady Hamilton, John. That’s why the Captain is on trial.”

John needs to move if they’re going to reach the square in time, but he stays immobile on his knees with one hand on the pistol and the other against the door. “She’s—” Dead. That’s the word. His mother’s dead. 

Suddenly, the air inside the small wooden house is stifling. 

Abbie wraps her arms around him in a hug more familiar than a woman of her social status would normally give. “I’m sorry.” she says quietly into his back. “Father wanted to send me away again so I couldn’t tell the truth. I won’t let them lie.”

Once James is free, he won’t let Peter Ashe live. “We need to go,” he says, and stands, so she moves with him. 

Giving Vane Abbie’s journal was a precaution in case finding her took too long. It does, ultimately; they haven’t reached the square yet when the first cannon fires. When it explodes against a nearby wall, she screams, shrill and twisting through the air. “You didn’t tell me there was an attack!”

“It was the backup plan!” he answers over the second cannon, pulling her away from the assault. She runs after him, clutching one of his hands in hers and holding her skirts up with her other. People panic, dashing through the streets around them. The soldiers hunting them rush toward the town square.

“My father is back there,” she says, stumbling in an effort to keep pace with him. “All these people— _ John _ —”

He doesn’t notice the man rounding the corner, the one who recognizes Abbie and so recognizes him as a threat, until the musket ball enters his leg. 

As he falls, she shouts, “Colonel, stop! No, Colonel, I order you—” 

Pain erupts from his stomach when the second musket ball hits, the metal fracturing beneath his skin. Maybe he screams, maybe he doesn’t—it’s a feeling like fire spreading through his body. Distantly, he registers thin fingers at his waist, and thick skirts brushing over his legs. His vision blurs and dims. The world grows hazy. When he breathes, the air catches in his lungs, sharp as glass. 

Somewhere far away, past the curtain of blue and white cotton blocking his sight, James hears the Colonel says, “These men are infections, Lady Ashe. Don’t try to protect him.”

Though Abbie answers, her words are garbled, and John doesn’t know how much time passes before she’s on her knees beside him, tugging at his arm. “I know it hurts,” she’s saying, voice edged with panic, “but we need to hurry, John.”

Together, they manage to get him to his feet, and together, they stumble towards the pier. He has his arm around her shoulder, leaning heavily against her side so she sags from the strain. With each step, he feels the intact ball in his thigh move closer to his bone. The splinters in his stomach separate and burrow. He’ll die before he ever reaches the sea. 

Then—he blinks, and suddenly he’s at the pier, and Abbie’s calling, “Captain! Captain!” as an English soldier demands she leaves the fugitive’s side. “Don’t fire! Hold your fire!”

“Easy, easy.” James is there, reaching out of the long boat to take John from her shaking arms. “Stay with us, John.”

The man who shot him says, “Ready your guns, men!”

As James says, “Now, Vane,” John meets Abbie’s eye. Blood slicks her side, and mixes with the dirt on her white face. Vane sets his oar against the post of the pier, ready to push away. 

She steps forward, and tumbles in. 

 

 

“We need to leave now, John,” Miranda says from her place at the end of the bed. “I know it’s all very sudden, but we need to be gone tonight.”

In her hand she holds a candle with its wick burning low, the flame shivering in the late spring draft so shadows contort her pale face. Just outside the light’s periphery, James sifts through John’s drawers, only visible in brief flashes of dark red. “Get him out of bed, Miranda,” he says. “Ships don’t wait for smuggled cargo.”

John blinks, and the shadows make his mother look dead. “Where’s Thomas?” he asks. His heart stutters against his ribs. “Where are we going?”

Something in the dark slams closed, wood against wood. 

“Thomas is gone,” she says, leaning forward to take his head with her cold, thin fingers. “We’re going home.”

Abruptly, pain blossoms and spreads from his leg and his stomach as her fingers wrap around his wrist. “Something’s wrong,” he says. “Something’s wrong with me.”

When her fingers tighten their hold, he screams. James kicks the dressers, and swears. The night swallows every sound moments after they form. 

“I’m dreaming,” John says, his childish voice high and reedy, drifting in the draft, as Miranda tugs him forward and the light snuffs out. “I’m dreaming, I’m— _ this is a _ —”

“Yes,” says a voice in his ear, disembodied in the dark. “It’s all just a dream.”

 

 

Two days after the crew’s escape from Charles Town, John wakes on the captain cabin’s padded window seat to the sight of the Atlantic stretching out unbroken on all sides, large and blue with the foam frothing the waves as silver as his name in the sunlight. Dr. Howell is with him when he wakes, fussing with medical supplies and rerolling fresh bandages. The cloth of them is rough beneath John’s shirt. Somehow, despite his years running around cobblestone city streets, hunting prey in the Far North, and these past few months playing the part of a pirate, he hasn’t been injured often. He hasn’t lost many people he cared about either. 

Now, just a few weeks after James and Miranda thought they had their future secured, John’s lost his mother, and can’t move his body without wanting to scream. According to Dr. Howell, the pain in his leg and abdomen will pass. Likely he’ll even be able to walk normally again. 

In his watery window reflection, John sees the doctor smile. “Be careful with yourself now, Mr. Silver,” Dr. Howell says. “I think I removed everything, but I don’t know for certain. Might be a while before you can walk without support, but don’t worry. We’re all looking out for you.”

It’s morning, which means James and Mr. Scott must be giving the crew the day’s orders. Abbie—or Miss Ashe, as the doctor calls her—is with the crew, safely refusing to leave the noble Billy Bone’s sides. That’s good, John thinks dully. With Vane’s remaining crew on board, he doesn’t trust anyone other than Billy or James to keep a nobleman’s daughter from Max’s fate. 

When he doesn’t answer Dr. Howell’s declaration of brotherhood, the other man says, “I’m sorry about your mother. I lost my own when I was around your age. Mr. Scott’s willing to stay quartermaster while you recover.”

John finally looks away from the water and over to the doctor, who stands there in front of the window seat with knit brows and fidgeting hands. “What?” he says. “‘While I recover?’”

Before Dr. Howell answers, the door opens. James enters, deep in conversation with Billy and no Abbie in sight. When they see John awake, they both stop, words dying, so the door slams behind them. 

“What the fuck does he mean?” he says, trying and failing to sit straight. “Oh fuck—” Dr. Howell takes him against his will, maneuvering him to lean against the wall. “I’m fine,” he says, harsher than he intends. “Why does Mr. Scott—”

“Thank you, Dr. Howell,” James says, and adds without subtlety, “John doesn’t react well to help. Excuse his behavior, and leave us.”

Though Dr. Howell leaves (with a final comment that John’s no worse than the rest), Billy stays. “We, the crew,” he says, speaking for the men, “voted you for quartermaster. Everyone knows you cut the forestay, and no one believes Vane came up with the idea to save the Captain alone.”

“Don’t,” James says as John goes to speak, and sits on the wedge of the window seat near his feet like Miranda in his dream. “Even if you don’t think you can now, you can learn. No one expects you resume responsibility until you can move around.”

Apprehensive, John peels away the thin blanket to where his pants are cut just above his knee. The area is tightly bandaged, and those bandages are clean. “I was really shot twice?” The pain in his stomach is acute; there’s no reason to check the damage there. 

Without looking at him, James answers, “Yes. By the same man who killed Miranda, Abigail tells us.”

Billy passes John a half pint of water. “She’s with Mr. Scott now,” he says. “She thought being on the longboard would stop them firing. It turns out she was wrong. She doesn’t have any desire to return soon.”

At the time involving Abbie seemed reasonable, because John thought she could convince the jury and stop the attack. Now that he knows he was wrong, he thinks he should have left her to leave. 

“Dr. Howell wants you in a real bed while we’re in Nassau,” Billy continues instead of James, who hasn’t looked directly at John once. Maybe that’s why Billy’s here. Because James can’t look at him. “Think Rackham will let you stay a few days?”

John wants Miranda’s house, because he wants Miranda. “Yeah,” he says, and sips the water.

“The tavern would be better,” James says, “but Vane says Hornigold took the English pardon and sold Eleanor to the Navy. For the first time since I came there, there’s no Guthrie in Nassau.”

There’s no Guthrie in Nassau, but there might be her and James’ long sought Spanish gold. John looks back out to the water through a window of the ship first belonging to country he still calls home, and wants his English mother. Knowing James, he’s already declared war against the Crown for this. They destroyed a major New World town in her honor. In Thomas’ honor.

Almost subconsciously, he hears Billy say he needs to oversee the riggers, followed by a soft  _ click  _ of the closing door. The silence that ensues after he’s gone sinks into John’s bones. Then James moves up the seat, and rests a hand on his shoulder. His calluses are obvious through the shirt. Even before he changed from McGraw to Flint, sea air weathered him. Miranda and Thomas are gone, but he isn’t. 

“John,” he says, shoulders sagging, aging in grief. “I’m sorry.” Sorry he didn’t keep Miranda safe. Sorry he was captured, and John nearly killed in the process of saving him. 

The Hamilton family is gone. Though he survived, the Lord Proprietor was right—John is the bastard son of a Spanish dancer and her lover, and never worthy of the Hamilton name. He swallows hard and nods, failing to ignore the pain eating away at his body. Slowly, James lowers his hand, and looks with him out across the sea, the wide of expanse of lawlessness that claimed them both a long time ago. 


End file.
